#168 - Stop Waiting to Know the Right Thing. Here's How to Decide

You know that feeling where you're staring at what feels like a total dumpster fire, and you’re just… frozen? It’s not because you don't care or because you don't know anything. It’s because you're waiting to feel certain before taking action. You’re waiting to know you’re doing the right thing. 

So, you gather one more resource, take one more course, do one more deep dive, and each bit shows you one more gap until certainty, starting the cycle all over again. 

Here’s the problem, though. That certainty you're waiting for? It isn't coming. 

In this episode, Allie and Emily give you a different approach to help you do, even when you don't feel ready. We talk about three main considerations, safety, functionality, and sustainability, to help you make a reasoned, reversible first pass. The best plans require troubleshooting, not perfection. 

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

1️⃣ Paralysis is usually an imposter syndrome problem, not a knowledge problem — More education won't fix it. Getting started will.

2️⃣ Safe → Functional → Sustainable — Three questions to find a starting point that's thoughtful, realistic, and adaptable.

3️⃣ Complex animals don't need complex plans — The plan that gets done consistently beats the perfect plan that never starts.

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

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Allie: But so like I know from personal experience, the families and practitioners who make the most progress aren't the ones with the most comprehensive plans that have the most stuff packed into them.

It's the ones who keep going because the plan was simple enough to sustain.

 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...

[00:00:36] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:37] 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.

[00:00:58] Emily: Okay, so here's the scenario. You're looking at a dog and you have a list of things that need attention, and you're completely frozen. Not because you don't care, not because you don't know anything, but because you're waiting to be sure before you act, before you make a decision.

So here's what I would like to offer to you today. That certainty isn't coming. As we've recently discussed in ep- in recent episodes, we don't get to live in a predictable world. So let's just let that dream die. Because you can either wait for it, you can wait for the moment that you feel certain, or you can learn how to make decisions without that feeling of rock-solid certainty.

And this episode is about the second option, how we proceed in the face of, I'm gonna just say terrifying uncertainty because sometimes it can feel that way, and n- not always with our pets, but sometimes it can feel that daunting. So we've spent the last two weeks talking about how multiple problems are usually just one dog in distress, and you're seeing multiple symptoms of the same root cause, and how the plans we build in response are sometimes more about our anxiety than our dog's needs.

Obligatory sidebar to say, when I say dog, fill in the blanks with any other species 'cause we love all our species here. But today we are gonna close the arc with the practical question, "Okay, so what do you actually do first? How do you start? Where do you start? And how do you decide?"

The inability to decide where to start is, I think, in my experience, in my selection bias, one of the most common reasons that good intentions stall out. And it's not a knowledge gap.

Any time we are given a framework, which is essentially like a way to work through a decision or a, a process for working through a decision- Then you can actually act. You know what to do because you have a process in place for how you make those decisions, and then how you act on the decisions that you've made.

If you wait until you feel certain about something, you'll be waiting forever. You just get stuck, and that is where a lot of people get stuck, both pet parents and behavior professionals. So by the end of this episode, you'll have a three-part triage lens that you can apply to any complex case. Not to find the right answer, 'cause that doesn't exist. There's many paths up the mountain, and also there are some paths that will lead you off a cliff. But there's not, like, one true path up the mountain, y'all. But when you have this three-part triage lens, you can make a confident, reasoned, and revisable decision about where to begin. And I think I wanna emphasize that revisable part, because one of the biggest strengths that you can have as a behavior consultant, as a pet parent, as a business owner, as a human in these very uncertain times, is the ability to pivot in real time.

The ability to look at everything that's happening and assess the entire situation and adapt in the moment. So let's all become more adaptable together. That just-- It started off serious and just ended smarmy. I don't know what happened there, friends.

[00:04:36] Allie: like mid-sentence, it just went off the rails.

[00:04:42] Emily: I have no defense for what just came out of my mouth. I, I, i'm just sorry. I didn't mean it to be smarmy, it just, that's how it ended up. It's fine. I guess that's where we're at right now. Whatever.

[00:04:53] Allie: Okay. So let's start By talking about why deciding where to start feels so hard, and why that feeling is lying to you, my friends. 

[00:05:07] Emily: it lies. It's a dirty liar.

[00:05:09] Allie: it's a dirty liar. Our brains routinely lie to us.

[00:05:12] Emily: It's true. Real facts.

[00:05:14] Allie: Real facts. So we get into this, like, paralysis pattern when we have an animal in front of us who has complex behaviors, and I think one of the things that's really hard is a lot of maladaptive behaviors have comorbidities. So for example like, it is well-studied that separation anxiety, confinement anxiety, which you can argue there's a lot of overlap, but separation anxiety, confinement anxiety, sound phobias, and reactivity have very high levels of cor- comorbidity. So any time I work a, a separation anxiety case, I'm like, "Also, tell me about what sound sensitivities your dog has and what they react to?" And clients think I'm a wizard because they're like, "How did you know?" And I'm like, "Because there's, like, something like an 80% chance that that is happening." It's like, like, it's a ridiculously high correlation.

[00:06:14] Emily: It's almost like I do this for a living.

[00:06:16] Allie: almost like I do this for a living for the last however, 12 years. So, so I think that is one of the hard things when we're talking about maladaptive behaviors is there are a lot of maladaptive behaviors that come along i- in a package very routinely, which automatically makes it more complex. But that can also be true even if you're, you're working with an animal who doesn't have maladaptive behaviors. Like Emily, you with Miley, she doesn't have maladaptive behaviors per se, but she's an adolescent, and adolescents are complex. And, before we hit record, you were talking about, the, just the, the ups and downs of, like, one day she knows how to do a thing, and the next day she's like, "I've never heard this in my life. What are you talking about?"

[00:07:06] Emily: It's true.

[00:07:07] Allie: And so, and navigating her plus Copper and, and all of his medical stuff and, and their interactions and, like, we, we talk about complex cases as if it's always something that has safety as the, the crux of it, and that's often true, but the more... the longer that I've been in this field, honestly, like, everything is more complex than we think it is.

[00:07:32] Emily: That's just true for everything in life, not just our field.

Like, why is everything more complicated than it feels like it needs to be? That's my tantrum for the day. No guarantees it's gonna be the only one, but I, I'm done now. I had my tantrum. We can move on. Please continue, Ally.

[00:07:48] Allie: That was the most benign tantrum I've ever witnessed you have.

[00:07:52] Emily: It was more of an internal tantrum of like, "Why is everything so complicated?"

[00:07:57] Allie: Yeah. So, so that, that was just an aside of e- even though we're going to be talking a lot about maladaptive behaviors in, or like behavior issues in this podcast because that's, what you and I do. That's, that's our jam. That's what we love. That's not the only thing we mean by complex cases.

Many, many things are complex and safety is not an issue. Safety and quality of life for the animal are not an issue, I should say.

So when a case is complex, we have this, like, natural desire to just gather more information before acting. We're like, "One more podcast episode, one more blog, one more webinar. Let's learn all the things that are possibly possible to learn," which is not possible. That was a terrible sentence. 

[00:08:49] Emily: You sounded like, do you remember or did you ever read any of the books by the author Emily Clary?

Okay. Well, Beverly Clary. I got the wrong sister.

[00:09:00] Allie: Okay, so first of all, definitely not Emily Clary because she doesn't exist. I'm sorry to Emily Clary if you do exist and you are an author. I apologize greatly.

[00:09:08] Emily: I, have no, no excuse for my brain. Beverly Clary, she used to write these stories where she'd use a lot of alliteration of like a terrible... A, a lot alliteration and repetition, like a terrible, terro- a terribly terrible thing to go wrong on this Tuesday. I don't... I can't make it up. But anyway, you just sounded like her.

Okay back on track. Today apparently the theme is me just like taking you off topic, and then you herding the cats. Carry on, please.

[00:09:37] Allie: Okay. Not just a today thing. That's...

[00:09:39] Emily: Zing! I can't be mad at that, 'cause facts though.

[00:09:43] Allie: you told, you told me to razz you in, in this episode. I've been looking for my opening.

[00:09:48] Emily: I, yeah, I just flung that door open for you, didn't I?

[00:09:54] Allie: Okay, so, our natural desire is just to, like, g- gather more information, like get all of the things, and then we go into this spiral because the more you learn, the more you learn that you don't know anything and that you can never know everything in the world and, and you end up in the pit of despair in the Dunning-Kruger curve and, all of that sort of stuff.

And the problem is, is that, like, it feels responsible to do that, and sometimes it is, let's be real, the, like, there is the cliched saying of somebody knowing enough to be dangerous

because that is very much a thing and we do see that a lot in this field. But often we see that it's a way of avoiding the discomfort of making a call without a guarantee. I've met many highly qualified, very competent professionals who are like, "I don't know what to do in this case," and, they bring it to us, like in PetPro or something. And I'm like, " But you do know what to do. Like, I've watched you solve this case before. You absolutely do know what to do. Why is this any different?" And when it comes down to it, like, as we're going through the process of, of figuring out what the actual problem is, it's that they don't feel comfortable making the decision that they know they think should be, they should be making, for whatever reason that is.

And that, that ultimately leads into this problem of in behavior work, the guarantee never comes.

There's no protocol that's going to work the exact same way every single time. There's no first step that is universally correct. And one of my examples for that is in 99.5% of client cases, I start them off with body language because we can't communicate with our dogs, cats, whoever. I only work dogs and cats. We can't communicate with our dogs and cats if we don't know how to listen to them, if we don't know how they're communicating, all of that.

So 99.5% of my cases, I'm going to start there. And then I have the .5% of cases where I get somebody who is coming either as a very qualified professional who has, has realized that you can't be your own behavior consultant. We've talked about that multiple times on the podcast, in our blog. Or somebody who is, like, a hobbyist.

They came to us maybe because they heard us on the podcast, and, I'm talking to them about their dog, and they are giving me beautiful body language observations. And I'm like, "Cool. I don't need to start there with you. It, I, I can very clearly tell that this is a thing that is not a problem for you."

So even something like that where, where I'm like almost every single case I have, I'm going to start by teaching somebody d- start by teaching somebody body language, there have been cases where I'm like, "Cool. Nope, we've already done that. I don't have to start there." So really there is no first step that is universally correct. 

[00:13:10] Emily: I find it fascinating how predictable of a pattern this is. Like, humans are adorable because we all are unique, and we're all our own individuals, and also there are just some things about us that are just very predictable. And one of the kind of predictable patterns that I see is that both behavior professionals and parent, pet parents who feel stuck, they're almost never waiting for infor- more information.

They think they are, but what they're really waiting for is to feel confident enough that if this doesn't work, it won't mean they did the wrong thing. Like, that's what's underneath all of that. If I can just-- Th- maybe this next course will be the answer, or maybe this next trainer will be the one, or maybe this next book that I read, whatever, right?

That's not a knowledge problem It's an imposter syndrome problem. I'm using air quotes because imposter syndrome means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But the, the point of whatever we're calling imposter syndrome, the point of that is that education isn't going to solve it, or more education isn't going to solve it.

Now, like Ally said, there is such a thing as knowing just enough to be dangerous and not knowing enough to actually be effective, and in that case, more education will solve it. But we'll set that aside for now, and we'll, we'll stay on this track for now. If you already have a lot of knowledge and you've been working these cases, or if you are a pet parent and you know your pet very well and you've been mostly successful except for this, like, one cluster of events that has been really distressing, then usually it's not about more knowledge.

And remember that the more that we are stalling, the more that we put off just starting a plan, the patterns get a little more entrenched. The more that they're rehearsing behaviors that don't serve them well, the more entrenched those behaviors become. And every week that a client is waiting for the right answer, their confidence is eroding a little more.

Their fatigue is getting a little worse. So indecision has a cost, and it-- The thing about the cost of indecision is that it's, it's not as visible as the cost of a wrong decision. But I think pro- part of the problem is thinking of them as wrong decisions, because almost always when people feel like they've made a wrong decision, what actually happened is they made a reasonable decision.

They were just lacking the, like, information and resources they needed to make a better one, and that information usually doesn't come from another course. It comes from the learner themselves. So, like, you try something, and then the learner goes, "No, that doesn't work for me." And when people think of that as like, bah, wrong, they're perceiving that feedback as failure, when really it's just feedback.

It's like, "Okay, we tried this. It didn't work. That's good to know." Right? 

[00:16:26] Allie: And I have a story of this, a very, very recent story of this. So, I've mentioned on the podcast many times that Oso's mobi- mobility is deteriorating. We knew that was going to be a thing. It's we're, we're following kind of normal trajectories on that. So, one of the things that was happening was we have these, like, three steps down to our backyard out the back door. Our front door only has, like, one step down. And y'all, as somebody who also couldn't go downstairs for a while, I have to say our back door stairs are legitimately very difficult to navigate. They are narrow. They are tall. I now know a lot about stairs and stair mechanics.

[00:17:19] Emily: I feel like whoever built your house, and particularly that, like, back door/basement area, just hates people. I, I, I'm, I'm convinced that that was the reasoning behind that decision, yeah.

[00:17:32] Allie: Let's be real. My house was built in the '50s, and in the '50s architects were not necessarily concerned about differently abled people, so

[00:17:41] Emily: Yeah. Th-they didn't care about the ADA whole situation.

[00:17:44] Allie: No, my house is definitely Yo, my house is definitely not ADA, and I learned that having to navigate it in a wheelchair.

So, anywho. So, like, my stairs are legitimately hard and I have a whole new respect and empathy for Oso having to go down those, 'cause I don't know how he ever did it. So one of the things that was happening was we were taking him out the front door, around the house, through the back gate to, to let him outside because he was just noping out of going the, down those back stairs, which, valid. The problem with this is my little jerk of a creature, I say jerk, but he's a normal dog we'd go out the front, and he'd be like, "Ooh, we're out front. Look at all the things to look at. Look at all the things to sniff." And I'm like, "Buddy, I have five minutes before my next call. Like, I need you to hustle."

And he's like, "Oh, no, I'm lying down, and I can't get up." Which, like, very clearly was not a mobility thing. It's

He's done this forever. He knows if he lies down, that people can't move him.

[00:18:56] Emily: I am quite familiar with the, "Oh, so...

Oh, I've fallen and I can't get up" move. And he even gets the face. Like, the pathos on his face is like, " I just can't stand up, Mom."

" I couldn't possibly, Auntie M.

[00:19:09] Allie: Yeah, so he would do that. So like really it was a, it was a human problem, not a dog problem. He was thoroughly enjoying that we were going out the front to go into the back. But the humans who had, like, stuff to do did not always enjoy that. And so, I knew I had waited too long to teach him to use the harn- his help him up harness to go down the back stairs. I should have been working on this months and months and months ago, and I can't even use my accident as an excuse because I knew well before my accident that it was a thing that I needed to work on that I wasn't working on for whatever reason, like, I, I It's hard to be your own consultant. I was doing other things with him, like 

all of this. 

Realistically I should have made somebody, not made, I should have asked somebody on my team to make a behavior plan for me and help me enact it is realistically what I should have done, and I didn't do that because why would I listen to my own advice? and so we got to this point where, like, maybe 80, 90% of the time Oso was going outside, he had to go out the front.

He, he

was not capable of going down the back stairs.

And again, the, the longer the problem went and the harder it became, I, the more I put it off. I was like, "Ugh, I know it's gonna be hard." I even, y'all, like told Alex, like, here's the first step of the thing because Oso had an aversion to- Us trying to use the harness down the back stairs.

So, like, we were starting from a, a negative emotional response as opposed to neutral. So, like, we already knew that was a thing, and I was like, "Here's the first step for it." I even told Alex what it was and showed him, and I still didn't do it. And so the harder it got, the longer it went, the more I put it off, because it just kept getting harder.

Snowballing, exactly. And so I was gone for two weeks. I was at Clicker Expo in New York, and then I immediately went on vacation to help my dad pack up his, his snowbird place. I was gone two weeks, and by the time I got back Alex had taught Oso how to go down the back stairs with his harness.

[00:21:27] Emily: What a gem of a human!

[00:21:31] Allie: What a gem of a human. And as he's, like, describing to me the process, he's showing me what he's doing, all that, my consultant brain is like, "I would've done this different. I would..." Like, all

of the things, right?

Of, like, it wasn't perfect, and also he did more in two weeks than I had done in a year. So, like, I... M- my consultant brain could take a seat.

And so now we get to use the back stairs for Oso going, going down. Alex showed me how he does it, and there are parts in there where I'm like, "I'm pretty sure this is superstitious behavior on the human side, and also I don't care." 

[00:22:13] Emily: It's worth keeping the routine, just maintain the routine.

[00:22:16] Allie: Right. Like, who cares? And so yeah, it's, it's one of those where it was like I needed somebody who didn't know as much as I did to just do the dang thing.

[00:22:29] Emily: Yeah, Just do the dang thing, I feel like is the subtitle of this episode.

Just do the dang thing.

Yeah, because that is such a beautiful example of how, like, the goal isn't to find the right first step, the goal is to make a reasoned first step that you can then learn from, and those are very different things.

Good triage isn't about being right. I'm wrong so often, y'all. I'm wrong so often, and I've just gotten to a habit of being very publicly wrong so that people can see me being wrong and it not being the end of the world or the end of my career or the end of my reputation. It's not about being right, it's about being thoughtful, intentional, and willing to adjust.

And when you think of that first step as being trial and eval and learning from it, then when it doesn't go as planned, it doesn't feel like you messed up, it just feels like you got good information and now you know how to pivot. So let's talk about the, the triage lens, which is like a, a three-part framework for deciding where to begin.

Now, I wanna be clear this is not a protocol, it's a framework. Those are two different things. It's a set of questions that can help you reason your way to a starting point. The three questions are: is it safe? Is it functional? And is it sustainable? And you work through them in that order. Safety first, always.

And it's not that safety is more important than the others, it's just because when you do them in that order, the, the previous one clears the path for the next one. It's, it's like I've, I've vi- envisioned, like, building a building. You start with, like digging a hole in the ground, and then you pour the foundation and...

You know what I mean? Like, you can't pour the foundation until you dig the hole in the ground. It's not that digging the hole is more important, it's just that you can't do the second one until you've done the first one , right? So make sure it's safe, first of all. Then- Let's see if it, it's, if, is it ever functional?

It might not be functional in this specific moment. We're gonna trial and eval that and find out. But is it generally functional? Great. Proceed. Is it sustainable? Can you or your clients, whoever is gonna be doing the thing, can they do it on a regular basis? Can they be in it for the long haul? So let's dig into each of those a little bit deeper.

So first, the is it safe question. Before anything else, if there's a safety concern that has to be addressed, we need to pause and, and address the safety stuff for the pet, for the family, for anybody else who might be in contact with them. We need to make sure we're reducing harm in the world, regardless of who all is involved.

We care about the safety of everybody involved, n- regardless of who that is. And I wanna be clear that safety issues, that's, the, we're, I'm not always referring to aggression, right? Sometimes a safety issue can be a dog who isn't sleeping, a, an animal who's in chronic pain an animal whose stress level is so high that they just can't learn anything 'cause they're chronically well outside the thinking and learning zone. So safety isn't just about preventing conflict, it's also about physiological and emotional safety as well.

[00:25:48] Allie: And I will add not just for the animal. You mentioned safety for all people involved. So like going back to my example of Oso going down the stairs a couple of days ago we were going out and his-- I don't even know what happened, but I think one of his front feet slipped a little. He went down in a way that was different than, than he had been going down, and that hurt my back.

And so I was like, ooh, we need to maybe readdress some of the, the body mechanics that humans are doing in the long run for this.

So yeah, like safety for, for all individuals, not just the animal

[00:26:31] Emily: I I don't wanna shame anybody, but I had some words, some kind, supportive, but words, with one of my mentees way back in the day, because this person wanted me to help them figure out how to make their client with rheumatoid arthritis use a clicker I was like, "You don't. It hurts. Stop hurting your clients."

And they were new. I, I... Again, no shame. They were new. They didn't know. But like, oh my gosh, yeah, lose the clicker if, if you have a client with RA in their hands. Come on. Yeah, so you're absolutely right. It's not just about the non-human. It's also about the humans, for sure.

So the, if... So just in general, regardless of what we mean by safety, and think of safety as harm reduction, right? If there is a c- a, a concern of safety or potential harm, that's your first priority. Again, not because it's the most important or the most interesting just because, like, nothing else is gonna work until it's been addressed.

You have to dig the hole before you pour the concrete, right? All right, moving on to the next one. Is it functional? Once safety is handled, harm reduction has been done as, as much as any of us can do it what is the thing that, if it improved, would make most of the other things easier? How can we do that sort of across the board efficacy of, like, having the most impact with the least effort on the part of our learners, right?

And this goes back to the first episode in this arc of looking for that root. So the functional first step is usually the one that addresses the most correlated problems at once, the, the root thing that is causing all of the other symptoms. So some examples of that is, like, if this animal is having multiple issues because they're not getting enough sleep, address the sleep.

What's gonna help this animal improve their sleep? If we have a problem of chronic stress, what can we do to reduce overall arousal? If we have a problem with this animal having a strong punishment history or unreliable, unpredictable consequences how do we build in a really solid, reliable reinforcement history?

Any other kind of unpredictability. If the environment is unpredictable, if the people are unpredictable establish predictability, right? And what's interesting about all of this stuff is that it's not glamorous. When you're doing this work well, it's about as interesting as watching paint dry. You're not doing sexy protocols that look really fancy and are, like, Instagram worthy.

You're not showing off your, your training chops. They're, they are unglamorous because they're foundational And again, to go back to my analogy, you can't build the house until you build the foundation first. So like, if you're ever going to get to a place where you're doing the sexy work, which most of our clients in our ICA, in our, among our, the clients that we attract to our business, they don't want to do sexy training.

So most of the time we've just got like a nice solid, cute little cottage on top of our foundation. But, that's not true for everybody. We know a lot of people whose, whose client base just really loves training, and so they are trying to build on, a build-up to sexy training, right?

But I, I tangented again. I'm, I'm hurting myself this time. You don't have to hurt me. I can hurt myself. The point is that if you do that work first and really address the root stuff, it's not going to involve sexy training, but it is going to be incredibly functional and impactful. So a good thing to ask...

Oh, sorry. Did you wanna say something?

[00:30:33] Allie: I have an I have an addendum once you're done with the functional...

[00:30:38] Emily: So, a good thing to ask yourself is, "If I changed only this one thing, what else might shift?" That's kind of your, your functional lever or your functional dial, right? Of like how, how much of a ripple effect will changing this one thing have on the overall behavioral health of this animal or the, the whole, the whole family, the whole neighborhood, the whole world.

Okay. I'm just,

just having moments today, friends. It's fine.

[00:31:09] Allie: Having moments. It's okay. You can have moments. And I just wanna connect the dots for a moment,

because we talk about this all the time

in enrichment

where, where we talk about what's your across the board activity? What is the one thing that you can do? And usually scent work is the example that we give, so I'm gonna give it again. What's the one thing that you can do that have an, that has an impact on multiple categories of welfare,

wellbeing 

Well, both welfare and well-being. So we talk about how scent work can be a species typical behavior, how it can be calming for some animals, how it can be mental exercise for some animals. If you do it in particular way, it can be physical exercise for some animals.

That one thing that has a huge effect.

We also talk about the small step, big win part of our framework, where you have the one thing that, like, life gets easier, and management is often that of you don't want your dog to steal the turkey off the Thanksgiving Day table, crate your dog during Thanksgiving dinner. Done. Solved. You're welcome. So we talk about this all the time when we're talking about an enrichment plan, and it's the exact same thing that we're talking about when it comes to behavior change, is how can we do... Sorry, we're warm. It distracted me. What is one thing that we can do that has a massive impact?

[00:32:45] Emily: Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like enrichment frameworks were built to efficiently consider everything you need to think about in behavior change, and that's why we believe in taking an enrichment framework approach to behavior change. Almost.

The next question is, is it sustainable? So, I just want y'all to remember this, especially behavior professionals, just, just treat this as a mantra. Write it in lipstick on your mirror. Or if you're like me and you don't possess lipstick because makeup is just a big nope for you, I don't know, write it on a sticky note or something.

The best intervention is the one that actually gets done. The best intervention is the one that actually gets done. I used to tell clients when I saw private clients in person... Or no, actually just not in person, always. When I used to see private clients, I would tell them, "I can write the best training plan in the world, and if it is not sustainable for you, it's not the best training plan in the world."

It doesn't matter how pretty it is, it doesn't matter how fancy, it doesn't matter how proud you are of the training plan that you've made. If it's not sustainable for your client, it's not gonna get done, and then it's not a good training plan, right? So generally speaking, a protocol that requires 45 minutes of structured training daily from a family with three kids and two jobs is not sustainable, no matter how well designed it is.

I say generally speaking because I, I love some of my favorite clients. When we started working together, they ha- they were spending 10 hours a day taking care of their dog. And so when we started working together, my plan involved four hours a day, which is wild. I would never consider, under most circumstances, giving somebody a training plan that required four hours a day, but that four hours a day was cutting down their effort by six hours.

So for them, four hours was incredibly sustainable. For most people, it's not. And by the way, we got it down to where they were spending much less time than four hours a day taking care of their dog. But sustainability means accounting for the human's actual capacity, not their ideal capacity.

Accounting for their current stress level. Accounting for their history with training, not just their skill, but their emotional history with training. Accounting for what they've already tried and abandoned. Accounting for their caregiver burden. Accounting for their adherence fatigue. The thing about an enrichment-based approach to behavior change is you're looking at the whole picture, which means not just the whole animal, but the whole person and the whole environment, and you have to be aware of the ripple effect impact of everything that you're asking them to do so that you can be aware of how your plan is impacting the whole picture, not just the behavior in isolation.

So a sustainable first step is one that the, the pet parents or guardians, whoever is involved, can do on their worst week, not just their best week. It's one that we can adjust for when they are really struggle busing, and then give them latitude to do more if they want to and they feel like they can in moments when they're doing great, right?

And I wanna just say, you don't always have to move through all three questions. Sometimes safety and function point to the same answer, and that's your starting point. Remember that this is a framework, it's a guideline. It's not a hard and fast rule. We don't take a prescriptive approach, even to frameworks.

We take a descriptive approach. And boy, have we had a really steep learning curve over the past seven years of teaching people how to use an enrichment framework that has multiple steps, but doing it in a descriptive way that actually works for them and for their clients and for the animals they're working with, because, just 'cause we're teaching things linearly doesn't mean that it always happens linearly, or that it all has to happen separately and discretely.

Sometimes you can do all three things in this triage model at the same time. And if you can, great. Don't artificially break it up and make more work for yourself. Just do the thing, right?

It's not a formula. 

[00:37:16] Allie: I was gonna say, I had such a, a cute coaching call with a, with one of my mentees just the other day, where she, I'm not gonna say confessed, because that is not her style at all. She just, like, point-blank told me. She was like, " The enrichment framework doesn't work for my brain, so I kind of made, made it my own and, and take the parts of it that work for my brain and, and arrange it in a different way."

And, and she said it, like, a little apologetically.

And this person is not typically a, a, not an unconfident, apologetic person, so if it

was anybody else, it would've been like a true confession, like, "I'm so sorry,

but I 

don't do it the way you teach it." And but for her, she was like ... It was just a matter of fact. And and I was like, "Yeah, that's fine. You do you. You, you get results, and you do it in an effective, empathetic, empowering, efficient way, so I don't care if you do it exactly the way that we teach it." And yeah, it was j- it was just, like, such a cute conversation.

[00:38:27] Emily: I love the look on people's faces when I tell them that we don't do it the way we teach it. We had to reverse engineer what we do to figure out how to explain h- what we're doing. But by definition, you have to teach something in a linear way because, like, you have to teach the discrete steps, and neither of us have linear brains, and we don't work through cases linearly.

We adapt to what's happening in front of us. We jump back and forth based on new information. When I say back and forth, back... up and down on the, on the steps in the enrichment framework based on the information that we're getting. Real life is less compartmentalized and less linear than teaching models are.

And, and that has been a really interesting thing to try to communicate to people and teach people is, like, we are teaching this to you in a compartmentalized, linear way because that's how teaching works. But when you get fluent at using any framework, not just an enrichment framework, but any framework, when you are fluent at it, you're not using it in a compartmentalized, linear way.

You're using it in a responsive, descriptive way. So it is interesting. The, the path to learning people, learning how to teach people, that has been fascinating to me. Yeah, so it's just not, it's not a formula. It's a conversation that you're having with yourself or your client, if you're working with your client, your partner, if it's your own pet and you have a partner at home who's involved in the process, your family, whoever is involved.

It's a conversation that you're all happening. Nope, you don't happen conversations. Let me start that one again. It's a conversation that you're all having to get from overwhelmed to a reasoned decision, a plan based on solid reasoning. And crucially, the decision is revisable. Like, I, I don't know how many times I'm gonna say this on the podcast, but I'm just gonna keep saying it.

It should be adaptable. You sh- like when, when it doesn't work out, it's not a failure. It's just feedback. And so you just learn to adjust based on the feedback you're getting. You're not committing to a path forever. It's not set in stone. It's not monolithic. You're just choosing a starting point that you can learn from and adapt to.

So I think, like, this is one of those things that especially people who are new to this field think, that, if one-- if I become a good practitioner, I'll know exactly where to start. Like someday when I'm good enough, I will k- know the exact plan, and I will be able to follow through the plan from beginning to end with no difficulties at all, and it'll just work.

And the reality is that a good practitioner knows how to come up with a reasonable way to start their training point, u- use reasoning to figure out how to start, and then they can explain that reasoning clearly. And then when they get feedback, they adjust based on that feedback, and they keep going until they've helped...

they've reached the goal, whether that's their own personal goal with their pet or their client's goal with the client's pet. And that's a completely different skill set, and it's a skill set that anybody can build. It's not magic. It's not exclusive. You don't have to take some exclusive course and get some, like, specific letters at the end of your name to be able to do that.

It's just learning those skills. And honestly, one of the things that I love about PetPro is watching people learn those skills to fluency, and it is so fun to me. It warms my heart to see people come in with the formulas and the rules in their head and their fear of making mistakes and their fear, fear of failure and, and then just blossoming into these amazing adaptive growth mindset like ba-- okay, I can't say that because it's a clean podcast.

Baddies. There we go. Baddies at critical thinking, like great critical thinking skills. Like, it, it just lights me up inside to see how many people in PetPro go on that journey, and, and it just is a reminder to me at how capable people are of doing that if they are given the environment and the resources to learn those skills to fluency.

[00:43:01] Allie: 100%. I-- That was actually what I unmuted to, to essentially say, not as eloquently as y- as you said it. But it's so interesting to me, whenever we get a new round of people joining PetPro, and we get so many questions of, "How do I start this case?" Or more frequently, I would say we get people who are coming in and they're like, "Okay, I have my initial consultation coming up with this case. Here's the information. I don't know where to start." And it's so hard to answer that, that question because I'm like, "I don't know. Get in there and then see

where, 

where you start." And but, as I-- Th- that's a, that's a jerk answer, so I can't say that. Well, I

[00:43:45] Emily: Ally's not really that much of a jerk to our pet pro mentees, y'all.

[00:43:49] Allie: Unless they ask me to be. Some people specifically ask me to beat them up, and I'm like, "100% will do that for you." Yeah, Kelly, if you're listening, what have you written this week, by the way? So, so, anyhow but because we get that question so much, like every round that,

that PetPro opens, I've had to really think about my own journey

of like, when did I start becoming comfortable just walking into a session with almost no information, without, with almost no beginning prep? Like y'all, I, I, there's...

Like, I can walk into a session and five minutes before I learn what, what I'm walking into,

and I like having the five minutes before. There have been a lot of sessions where I walk in and I have no information, and we're, we're just, we're doing the dang thing, and I'm learning as, as I go what, why I'm there. And so I was like, what, what was it that made me feel comfortable

in that transition of going from like I have to do a ton of research, I have to like super prep, I have to know what my plan is before I get in there, to prepping for five minutes beforehand and, and coming in and being like, "Well, this is there's a lot going on, and yeah, we're gonna figure out where to start together."

And I realized it's, it's those soft skills of being able to ask the right questions, of being able to read between the lines of what people are saying and dig deeper into what they're saying to really get after their pain point, and being able to fall back on a triage framework or an enrichment

framework, they're very, very similar. Fall back on whatever framework it is that I need at that time to be like, yeah, all I have to do is figure out the first step. And I told this to, to one of our team members when she first started with us because she was in, in that boat of, very uncomfortable getting into the initial consultation, wanted to make sure she had a plan beforehand, all of that. And I remember telling her, "You just have to get through the initial. And you know what you

go do in an initial? You listen to somebody, you validate what they're, what they're going through. You empathize with them. You teach them body language, and you keep them safe. That's what you do." And aft- And I was like,

And every... sometimes give them some scent work if that's

possible in that, or makes sense

in that situation." And so I still remember, like, being in my office having that conversation with her where I was like, "You just have to get through the initial, and the plan will

make itself known

as you go through."

And, and she told me later that, like, for a long time, and even sometimes still, she tells herself that going into an initial where she's like, "This is... There's a lot going on. I don't know where this is gonna go. I just have to get through the initial."

[00:46:44] Emily: Yeah, that's delightful. I was, I was thinking about it as you were saying that, about where, where I got it from, and I think I benefit from parent privilege because my mom her job before she had me was special education, and nobody understood neurospiciness back then, so she didn't know that I was neurospicy, but she had building block skills for adapting to her learners and meeting them where they're at, and and, supporting learners through the process.

And so what I got from her was a love of learning, a love of exploration and trying things, and not worrying about mistakes being punished. Mistakes are just good information, and how do we adapt from that? And she was also very good, like because I was neurospicy, I would get easily overwhelmed by things, and she taught me how to break them down into smaller steps.

Because I was a chaos goblin and I really struggled with sequencing, she taught me how, like, what is your goal? What are you trying to achieve? Okay, and what do you need to do to, to do that? Okay, and what do you need to do to do that? And working backwards from there. And I f- so I feel like by the time I grew up and, and learned about enrichment and the enrichment framework, it was just very easily...

nope, that's not grammar. It was just very easy to step into that model because my mom had laid so much of that foundation already. So this is just my mom-- my parents don't listen to the podcast, but love letter to my mom because definitely that's where I got it from. And I think that's why I had such an easy time transitioning into behavior consulting because she gave me so much of that when I was young, and it was just easy to map that, those concepts onto this, this field, right?

All right. Love letter to mommy ended. Let's move forward. Okay. So let's try putting the triage lens to work today. Think of a case or a situation that you have been struggle busing about, that you have fee- been feeling stuck about, whether that's your own pet or a client's pet something that has been keeping you up at night or you've been ruminating on for weeks, and run it through those three questions.

Is there a safety concern? What's the functional lever, the one that would make the most other things easier? And what does sustainable actually look like in this situation? And when you ask yourself those questions, what does that point to? Even if the answer feels small or obvious, that's often actually a sign that you're on the right track.

If it feels like it's not big enough or important enough or hard enough or sexy enough or whatever, that usually means it's the correct answer because, again, foundational work is not sexy. And then- If you run through all three questions and you still feel unsure, that's okay. It means you might need more information.

That might be a signal that you do need to go get some additional education. We help people in Pet Pro all the time put their own professional development through an enrichment framework to help them identify what education they actually do need versus what they're just... They're hoarding education because they feel like they can't get enough to feel confident, right?

So, so that's okay. If you need extra information, cool. We all do. We're all constantly learning and growing. Nobody has... Nobody arrives at a place where they no longer need to learn, right? Oh, and sometimes information doesn't even necessarily mean taking another course. It may mean just asking your client more questions, which that is something we also work on a lot in Pet Pro.

There are so many conversations where people ask me a question, and I'm like, "I don't have an answer for you, but I have 20 more questions for you," and then they realize that they need to go back to their, their client and ask those questions, right? So sometimes the information gathering is asking about the family, about the environment, more information about that individual animal that you're working with.

So, wherever you need to get the information, get the information that will help you answer the three questions. And then it can also tell you what you don't know yet which I think is just as useful as telling you what to do. If you're s- continuing to gather information, and you're like, "Okay, now I have the information, and I don't actually know what to do with this.

I don't know how to handle this," that's what mentorship for, is for, friends. Courses are great, and sometimes you can get that I... what to do about it information from courses. But if, if we have learned anything from Pet Pro, it's that people can have taken every course in this field and still not know...

They have all of the pieces in the puzzle box, and they still don't know how to put the puzzle pieces together. And I feel like that's the difference between coursework and mentorship is the courses give you the puzzle pieces, but mentorship helps you put the puzzle pieces together. So it's also okay if you grab the information, and you're like, "Okay, I have the information.

Now what?" Cool. That just means you could benefit from mentorship. And pet parents- I know I've been talking a lot to the pet pr-pros. Allie's been doing a better job of, of speaking to everybody. But I would like to remind you that this framework is not just pr-for professionals. You can also use those same three questions to cut through the overwhelm and all the conflicting advice you're getting from the internet, from your family, from your neighbors, and find a starting point that feels manageable to you.

So you can ask yourself these questions: Is my dog safe right now? Or whatever species you live with. Am I safe right now? Is my family safe? Are my neighbors safe? What is one thing I could change that would make the most difference? And what can I actually do this week? What do I actually have the capacity for?

And those three questions are not going to give you a perfect plan. You will probably still need a behavior professional at some point to help you, but they'll give you a place to start, and a starting point is everything. Forward motion is still progress, regardless of how tiny the step or how slow you're going.

[00:52:58] Allie: yeah. 100%, that first step is the hardest. It's like when you're back in school and you have to write a paper, and you're just staring at a blank page because you can't write that first sentence or that first paragraph. And then once you get that done, like, the rest of it just flows.

And so yeah, absolutely, that first step is so hard, and also it doesn't have to be as hard as we make it be. And so I I wanna go back to, we were, we were talking about complex animals, and not necessarily just complex because there are behavior issues. It could be they are medical, it could be that there are multiple animals in the house who all need different things. It could be that it's a complex situation because the, the human, can't go down the stairs, and therefore can't teach her dog how to go down the stairs, so, that's, that's just out. But a complex dog doesn't need a complex plan. I think it's so interesting, especially when we're talking to, to professionals who are newer in the field. And y'all, like I said, we're... I, I've been professionally behavior consulting for 12 years now. I give my clients, aside from body language and management, maybe, like, three things to do Like, and that, that's, like, actual, not hyperbole, I give my clients maybe three things to do. I'll have them use those three things in different ways, in different situations, so there are variations of those three things. But, like, for the majority of my, my behavior cases, I give them, like, three things. And we're talking about, like, these are cases who I'm working with a VB. There's a cocktail of anti-anxiety medication on board.

It's, like, a level three at least bite. Like, maladaptive behavior is out the wazoo, just a laundry list of, of issues. Like, I'm not talking about, like, little mild reactivity here. I'm talking about, like, for really real complex, difficult cases, and I

still give them, like, three things to do. And and that, when I talk to, to people who are new to behavior consulting in, in, in our field, that blows their mind, where they're like, "What do you mean?"

I'm like, "Yeah, I don't, I don't usually need more than that." Like, I need some way to teach regulation. I need some way to teach them to go away. Scent work does cool brain things.

[00:55:30] Emily: Stent work does cool brain things.

[00:55:33] Allie: I think I said that. I, I think I last said that in, like, a real place,

[00:55:39] Emily: You said it in your Clicker Expo presentation.

[00:55:41] Allie: You. I was like, I was somewhere real and said it like that. 

[00:55:46] Emily: And I was dying in the audience. I, 

[00:55:48] Allie: I... can't... I have read, heard, learned so many times what the cool brain things are, and my brain cannot retain that information. It can only remember that scent work does cool brain things.

[00:56:03] Emily: Honestly, that's all. We-- practitioners don't need to know more than that, and 

I

I have just gotten to a point-- I love learning things and nerding out about them because, like, my curiosity won't shut up until I do it. And then also at the end, I'm like, "That was really interesting. I'm not gonna remember this, but at least my curiosity shut up."

And I've just stopped even trying to retain information that I don't need to use because I'm almost 50, friends, and like it's just not gonna happen.

[00:56:31] Allie: That happened,

yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so, like, you don't need this super complex thing that has, like, a ton of different training exercises and protocols in it. These situations need consistent, well-reasoned steps that compound over time. There's a reason I can get away with, three things and, maybe I go up to five things.

Who Nelly. Who Nelly if I have to add, like, muzzle training in there, you know? Like- I know, I know. Getting, getting wild up in

here. Getting wild. But one of the reasons is because I can just choose an activity and then build on that activity of like, okay, so we used find it for scent work, hey, we can also use it in this situation, we can use it in that situation, we can use it in that situation.

And so w- w- we can compound those things over time and, and what I've found, because y'all, I wasn't always practicing in the way that I practice now with clients as I have gotten more confident, as I have learned more, the less I give my clients. And we have seen that time and again in Pet Pro of the more confident somebody is, the more that they trust that they know what they're doing, and that troubleshooting is not an admission of failure, it's a it is acknowledging that this is hard, and it's a very normal part of the process.

Like,

it's weird if you don't troubleshoot.

The more we see that uh, that, you know, that's a, a pretty standard trajectory in, in a profession. In this profession, I should say. I don't know about other professions. But, so I, I have data of past clients, I'm so sorry, clients from 10 years ago who I gave ridiculously long training plans with, like, 18 different things to do, and I gave it all at the same

time, and, and like, I am so sorry.

I'm guessing you're not listening because I was not effective probably for you in the long term. But if you happen to be listening, first, thank you for a second chance, and second, I'm so sorry that I didn't know as much then as I know now. But we're all doing the best with the knowledge and skills and, and bandwidth that we have at the moment.

But so like I know from personal experience, the families and practitioners who make the most progress aren't the ones with the most comprehensive plans that have the most stuff packed into them.

It's the ones who keep going because the plan was simple enough to sustain.

[00:59:05] Emily: And I just wanna say, because I feel like this has come up a few times in the past few years, and I know I've said it before on the podcast, but I'm gonna say it again. What we are saying may not be everybody's experience, and what we have learned from having conversations with colleagues is that our colleagues who attract training people, like hobbyists who just really love training for them, they give their clients all the training to do, and their clients eat it up, and, like, the more you give them, the happier they are because they just wanna use that clicker, right?

And, like, that's cool. That's amazing. I love that for them. I love that for you if you... if tho- that is your client base. That's not wrong. You just have a different client base. You have a different context. Your clients want different things. We are speaking in the context of working with people who aren't trainers.

They don't want to be trainers. They don't care about dog sports. They don't care about trick training. They don't care about conformation shows. They just want their pet to be healthy, safe, happy. They wanna have a good relationship with their animal. They want to stop living in fear and shame. And s- for, for the, for our client base, for those people, which I'm gonna go out on a limb and say is most pet parents, the, what we are saying applies.

If you don't have that client base, if you have the client base of, like, dog sport people and competition people and people who love clicker training then, then don't feel bad. If what you're doing works, it's because you're doing what's effective for your clients. But I, I have a friend who's really into competition and shows and all of that, and her client...

o- one of her clients came to one of our workshops, and she was just so proud, and she said to the whole room, " I never misclick. My clicks are always accurate." And I and I just... I, I watched her say that with, like, pride beaming from her face, and I remember thinking, "Wow, my friend and I have very different clients."

Like, lady, you would never wanna work with me, and also, like, I am not equipped to work with you because I don't care about training nearly as much as you do, right? And, like, that's amazing. Like, that's the point of the industry is that we are a diverse population that attracts diverse clients so that everybody has somebody that they can work with.

But I, I've just felt like I had to say that because if you're listening to th-this and you're like, "This isn't landing with me at all. Is, is there something wrong with me?" There is nothing wrong with you. You just have a different client base than we do. But if you've been waiting to feel ready, if, if you do, if this resonates with you and, and you are hearing this and being like, " Oh, dang, it me," then I wanna offer you this.

You are more ready than you think. You have enough information to make a good enough first call and just get started. And if it's good enough and it's done consistently, either you will get, you will get to your goal for the animals and possibly humans in your care, or you will be able to clearly identify what specifically you are missing and then you can go out and get that specific support, whether that looks like taking a course, whether that looks like asking your clients more information, whether that looks like getting mentorship or bringing another behavior professional onto your client support team.

If you get started and you get into it, instead of having this vague feeling like, "I don't know what I need for this case," you will become clearer on what it is that you need for that case. Or you'll surprise yourself and you'll just be able to complete the case on your own, and either of those are great positions to be in.

So cool, right? It's cool. All right. To recap the full thread, three weeks ago we said multiple problems are usually one animal in distress. Stop treating them like separate emergencies. Two weeks ago we said the plans we build in response are often based on our anxiety and our own fears and insecurities.

They're not for the actual learner in our care. They're for soothing the mean inner voices in our head, and that's worth noticing. Today we said stop waiting to know the right thing. Use that triage lens of safe, functional and sustainable and make a reasoned, revisable first call. That's the whole arc.

See the pattern? Check the plan, make the call. So this week I challenge you to pick one situation Where you felt stuck, run it through the three questions, write down what they point to, then do that one thing, just that one thing, and see what shifts. 

[01:04:14] Allie: if any of these three episodes helped You

think about a, a pet, a case, or your own practice differently, please share it. It is not only helpful to us but it's also helpful to the world and others. I did, I took a page out of your book.

Please leave a review. Tell a colleague. That's how this podcast reaches the people who need it most is, is by y'all and, and the grassroots movement. That was gross. I'm sorry I said that. Thank you for being here, and Emily's gonna see you next week.

[01:04:51] Emily: I, I will. Ally won't.

[01:04:53] Allie: I won't. I I just roll up. Emily tells me where to be and what to say, and then I'm like, "I'll say that," and then go off on a tangent

[01:05:05] Emily: Yeah we don't really follow our outline super well, but we do it good enough. Speaking of just get started and it's good enough, the podcast is Exhibit A.

[01:05:15] Allie: I feel like that actually just, like, turned some people off from doing. They're like, "Oh, is this what it looks like to just get started? Mm, no, I need more prep."

[01:05:25] Emily: Well, you know what? Those people just aren't our ICA, so that's fine. Ellen, have fun editing this one.

[01:05:33] 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. 

Almost, and it's almost like, enrichment as we're defining it is usually the answer for the functionality Why are we being just, like, smarmy little jerk wads?

[01:06:39] Emily: I don't know. I don't know. Listen, friends, we're human and we're allowed to be humans and have feelings and be tired and, and a little bit snarky. And also, I'm gonna go back to, like, a- an equally valid answer, which is hazing is our love language. Especially my love language, but also yours.

[01:06:59] Allie: It's both of ours.

Yes. Yeah. 

[01:07:02] Emily: Hazing is our love language, so it means that we love this podcast and our audience and people and animals and the whole world. Not the whole world. There are specific people on this planet that I definitely don't love because they're ruining everybody else's lives. But other than them, the whole world.

Ally's just dying at me right now.

[01:07:23] Allie: I hope Ellen keeps that.