#167 - Are You Designing Plans for Your Dog... or for Your Anxiety?

Hey, hi, hello. Do you also fall into the pet parent spiral? Worrying that you aren’t a good pet parent, that your dog is suffering, and that you aren’t doing enough. After a two-hour planning session, you have a color-coded, 14-item document that addresses every single thing your dog has ever done, might do, or could theoretically do on a Tuesday. 

No? Just us?

In this episode, Emily and Ellen dig into a common trap we see people fall into, both pet parents and professionals alike: building plans driven by anxiety, fear of judgment, and the desperate need to feel covered... rather than what actually helps the animal in front of you.

Whether you're a pet parent trying to do right by your dog or a professional trying to prove yourself to a client, this episode will help you recognize when your plan is actually about you and give you ways to break out of the spiral. 

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

1️⃣ Anxiety-driven plans exhaust everyone — when a plan is built to cover every possible problem and prove your competence, it collapses under its own weight. Overwhelm leads to inaction, not progress.

2️⃣ Ask the one audit question — "If I removed this, would the animal be meaningfully worse off? Or would I just feel less covered?" Anything in the second category is worth cutting.

3️⃣ Start with a sapling, not old growth — the minimum effective plan is the one you, or your client, can actually do. One consistent thing done well creates more change than twelve things never done.

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

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ellen: overwhelm looks really like two things. One is over planning and the second one is underdoing. So we get so focused on the plan that we need to do all the research on the plan and the right way to do the plan and the right sequence to do the plan that we then six months later have not done any of the action that is actually in the plan.

We have done so much time spent, so much time refining. The plan that we then don't actually reap the benefits of having a plan.

And when that happens. We feel like it's failure when nothing changes, and then that failure confirms the fear, and then we go back to over planning, over focusing, over planning, over researching, over planning and being afraid to implement. And it just keeps going and going and going. There is no end unless you intentionally find a way out.

[00:01:02] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:12] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:14] 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.

[00:01:35] Emily: Last week we talked about how multiple problems are usually one animal in distress, not five separate emergencies, like usually they're just multiple symptoms of the same underlying cause. Today we're gonna go one level deeper into the plans we build in response to that distress and what it means when those plans are built on our anxieties instead of clarity, instead of purpose, instead of our actual goals. Here's why this matters. Anxious plans. Don't just fail the dog or whatever other species you're working with.

They exhaust the human. And an exhausted human is the most common reason that a good training plan collapses. Clients don't follow through to the end. We don't get to reach our goals. Everybody's sad, right? And I wanna say again, this isn't about blame. It's not about shame. Been there, done their, Nope, that's not a, that's not how that phrase goes.

Let me start that again. Been there, done that, got that t-shirt. It's about recognizing a pattern so that you can interrupt it and redirect to something that's more productive and feels better for everybody involved. So by the end of this episode, you'll be able to recognize the difference between a plan built for the dog or whatever other species you're working with, and a plan built for your fear, anxieties, insecurities. If you're a behavior professional, your need to prove to your client that you are actually competent and good, and they're getting their money's worth because let me tell you, friends. I don't know how many people in Pet Pro have told us that that's why they build these monstrous plans, these monstrosities. I also hope that by the end of this episode, you'll have some language for what to do when you catch yourself. In this second one, you'll have a script for yourself so you can talk yourself down off of that novel building ledge that we've all been on. At some point or another, maybe all of us haven't.

Ellen, you are the most succinct person I've ever met. Have you ever been on that ledge of all the, the thick plans?

[00:03:47] Ellen: So what I think is the most funny is I, I planned this episode arc. I don't know, like a month ago. And I did the thing and I didn't need to do the thing anymore, so I totally forgot that we were doing this episode. And as you're going through that, I was like, oh, this is, this was a, I made this episode as an attack on me specifically, and I don't do this for my clients, but this is what happens with my own dogs.

Like I think I've said many times on this podcast before, probably in blogs, impact Pro on social media, probably everywhere, I'm very open with this. One of the ways that I exert control when I feel like I don't have control in the world is on my pet's experience. And so how much we're gonna work on and what we're gonna make progress on and what they're gonna learn is one of the ways that I try to like lock it down and feel like I have some semblance of control in a very wild world.

And so it can very quickly go from a very sustainable plan with my dogs, where everybody is happy, healthy, and making good progress. And like any onlooker would. Assess that this is working and going well to an entirely overwhelming, I'm gonna do all of these things and with what time? Because I didn't actually change anything.

And it so quickly snowballs into this, this, who's the guy that carries the stuff on his shoulder?

[00:05:05] Emily: Oh Atlas. Is it? Atlas? 

I 

[00:05:08] Ellen: either. Either way. Whatever snowball I'm now carrying is eating me rather than me being able to hold it in my hands.

[00:05:15] Emily: Yeah. Thanks for reminding me that it has been so long since I've studied the classics that I don't remember who you're talking about. But seriously though, I thank you for sharing that. Because here's, here's the thing about you that makes it extra potent for you to share that, that this happens to you.

Also, in addition to you being the most succinct person I've ever met in my life, also, you went from. Actual like facilities where your full-time job was doing kind of enrichment and stuff, so you weren't making plans for clients to a facility where you might have been making plans for clients, you were making plans for clients.

But it was in this very structured like group class. I'm here for very specific. Sports or basic manners or whatever to pet harmony, where by the time that you joined us and we put a ring on it, Allie and I had already made those mistakes, learned from them, adjusted our plans. So we taught you efficient training plans for consultations, for behavior consultations for complex cases. So at all of your experience. I, in theory, should have prevented you from doing the anxiety novel writing, and yet you still find yourself doing that. You're, you still get caught in that trap for your own pets. And I, I hope that our listeners feel validated by that because I think that's an incredibly powerful point that. Even when people have never experienced that with clients because their life experience prevented them from beginning into that trap it can still happen. Right. Which I think speaks to the universality. Universality. Is that how you say that? I'm gonna just go with it. Let's pretend that's the right way to say that. I think it speaks to the universality of. This experience that like when we're anxious and insecure and we don't feel like we have control and we feel like we've got something to prove, yada, yada, yada, all the reasons. The tendency, which is a very human common thing, is to just stack plan on plan on plan, on plan, on plan, right? 

[00:07:25] Ellen: Yeah. 

I assume it's human. Maybe it's not human. I don't know enough humans to say that it is fully human, but in the humans that I know, it seems like a default way to approach things.

[00:07:37] Emily: Within my selection bias, 

it is incredibly common. 

[00:07:41] Ellen: And man, I really wish I knew if this isn't human and this is learned, and there are cultures that don't do this, I would like to know who they are because I need to study their way of life.

[00:07:53] Emily: Right? Right. I need to know like what cultures out there don't do this and how we can be more like them. 

[00:08:00] Ellen: The first part is naming the pattern, and for me, I start to notice when the goal isn't, that my pets demonstrate that their needs are met, that my pets have a good quality of life, but making sure that I have everything covered. And that is a very subtle difference between the two, because when I am trying to make sure that their needs are met and they have a high quality of life, and their welfare and wellbeing and all of that.

It is also making sure that everything is covered. But when I switch to trying to have a checklist of things that I can work through, is when it starts to be problematic, and that is when it can very quickly go from my 10-year-old dog is still dog reactive. In fact, I think it's my guess Griffey doesn't get to go out very often because of his allergies.

They're so bad. Tangent we're in the stage in the Pacific Northwest that I am just constantly reminded that male trees exist and that they are just trying to put everything everywhere because we look out and our deck is just green with pollen. 

It is not great for a dog with severe environmental allergies.

But he is dog reactive at this point. I think I would probably upgrade him to dog aggressive, 

Because I would suspect that there are a lot of dogs that he would choose to fight. Given the opportunity to do so rather than flight, some of that is gonna be lack of practice. Some of that is going to be medically based.

The higher his pain level is, the more he is going to try to go for the offensive versus the defensive. And as a professional who helps people with this all of the time, and I have the skills and the knowledge to be able to help Griffey probably learn, potentially learn a different behavior pattern. The fact that I haven't can sometimes be really heavy.

But then I have to look at literally everything else that we have tackled in our life together and say, no, that was a concession. Like he can do all of these other things that we never thought possible. I put that to the side to make room for things that matter more in his day to day.

[00:10:03] Emily: Yeah, that is, that's such a powerful example of what we're talking about and how to recognize it and pull yourself out of it because I think that, for pet parents, there's this fear that if you don't do everything, something terrible will happen. And to be fair. That's not an unreasonable fear sometimes because a lot of times there are like neighbors threatening you and family members shaming you and whatever.

There are like actual consequences sometimes for some people, so like. Yes, the there your fear that your dog will get worse, you'll be judged, you'll get in legal trouble like you'll have like let them down and you're not a good pet parent. And like the internet has already told you many times that you aren't like, that is real.

That's real. Right. And for pet pros. The fear is that if you miss something, the case will fall apart, and that will mean something about you as a professional, Or your client won't feel like they got their money's worth and they're like, I can't believe I paid you X amount of dollars for this puny little plan. Or you'll feel like your client doesn't really think that you're good at your job and they'll give you a bad review. I, it's amazing to me how many people in our industry live in fear of bad reviews and friends. Let me just tell you that like some of the worst, most abusive trainers I've ever seen have had horrible ratings on the internet, and they still. Continue to get clients despite, oh, like abundant evidence that they are abusive trainers. So like the, the thing that I, that makes me, brings out my inner inner mama bear is when people are like, I don't wanna make this good decision because I'm afraid of getting a bad review. And I'm like. We can't afford for all of you good ethical trainers to be scared to make good decisions because the people who are actually abusing animals are paying a ton of money.

They're getting horrible reviews, and they're still thriving and they're still out there multiplying. So like you need to get brave because we can't afford for you to be scared.

[00:12:16] Ellen: Or better yet, do it Scared.

[00:12:18] Emily: Or do it scared? That's the Yes. I had a one of my mentees in the like, older version, the, the Proto PET Pro asked me, how do you do these things when you're, I know you have told me how anxious and, and upset and angry and. Hopeless you feel about things because they were working with me at really one of the, the lowest points of my life when I was incredibly anxious, depressed, angry, and I was very open with my students about the journey that I was going on. And I just said something like reflexively. And then as soon as I said it, I was like, this is so true. I just like need it on a mug or something, because my response was, well. When the only thing worse than doing the thing is not doing the thing. You just do the thing and, and as soon as that came outta my mouth, I was like. Ouch. That is true. Like you just do it Scared.

You do it depressed, you do it anxious because if you don't do it, the consequences are worse. And yes, friends, I realize that that is operating off of a negative reinforcement contingency. But when you are in a situation that that is the only reinforcement available to you, don't deprive yourself of that.

Reinforcement relief can be powerful friends. 

[00:13:36] Ellen: A lot, a lot of life is a negative reinforcement contingency. 

I don't necessarily eat because it brings me joy. I love it when it brings me joy, but I eat because I need, I need the relief in a number of ways. I don't necessarily sleep because I love sleeping all of the time. I do and do. I do enjoy some good sleep, but I sleep because again, it's negative reinforcement.

It's very punishing to stay awake after a certain wait.

[00:14:01] Emily: Yeah. I love sleep and also there are many times in my life when I would rather stay awake and keep doing the things that I'm really enjoying doing. 

But the, the sleep demands that it 

happens. Right. And this is not the episode to talk about the difference between. A socially mediated negative reinforcement.

And it's not, it's not actually. I learned in Kiki's episode that it's not socially mediated, but friends, I'm using the word that I know right now and I'll fix that later. But we can talk later about the difference between negative reinforcement that is inserted into the learners experience. For the intention of coercion and negative reinforcement, that's just a response to the environment. This is not the episode for that. I don't wanna get too far off, off track, but I want you to be aware that sometimes doing it scared is yes, a negative reinforcement contingency. And also if that is the best you have available to you, don't deprive yourself of that reinforcement, right. Okay, so back on track. We, we went on a little tangent. I'm not sorry. I don't regret it, but let's get back on track. So, for both the pet parents and the pet pros, the reasons for for piling plan on plan on plan Are completely understandable. Neither produces good plans that are sustainable, realistic some, most of the time not even effective because when a learner is trying to learn too many things and they have too many contingencies in their decision tree, it's really hard for them to make those good decisions. we want clear, consistent contingencies in a pretty small decision tree so that our learners are. Can really learn well in this context, I do this thing in this context, I do this thing. So those plants aren't even necessarily effective, much less sustainable.

[00:15:52] Ellen: And that overwhelm looks really like two things. One is over planning and the second one is underdoing. So we get so focused on the plan that we need to do all the research on the plan and the right way to do the plan and the right sequence to do the plan that we then six months later have not done any of the action that is actually in the plan.

We have done so much time spent, so much time refining. The plan that we then don't actually reap the benefits of having a plan. And the important thing is to start small, like you said. So if we have a decision tree, start with decision. One of the tree don't, don't have the whole, we're not, we wanna start with a sapling.

Not an old growth. And when we start with the sapling, you make one decision and then you get more information, which is going to change the rest of your plan. So part of the problem when we make these big, convoluted plans instead of doing one thing at a time, is that every time you make a change, you then have to reassess literally everything in your plan to make sure that it still works under the changes you just implemented.

When we take it one step at a time, one, you're gonna be more efficient. Two, it's not gonna feel so overwhelming. And three, we're not so focused on everything be right because that overwhelm. I see this a lot with my clients. I have been there before, which is probably one of the reasons that I clock it as early as I do, is that we're so focused on getting it right that we're afraid to do anything.

And when that happens. We feel like it's failure when nothing changes, and then that failure confirms the fear, and then we go back to over planning, over focusing, over planning, over researching, over planning and being afraid to implement. And it just keeps going and going and going. There is no end unless you intentionally find a way out.

[00:17:46] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. And I will, I will tell on myself because again, like I said, I've been there, done that, got that t-shirt and I think the wor the worst. The, the time that I did this, the worst, let me put it that way. The worst case that I can remember where I was just stacking plan on plan, on plan, on plan on plan was when I was still living in Utah, I had a client.

It was really complicated. She had been in a relationship with. Cis man, and he really wanted a bo be because he, he wanted the tough dog, and very, very typical of the culture there of like, I need a dog that's, super masculine and ripped and like, doesn't take any stuff from anybody and, and so bought a dog. I, I feel like probably from a sketchy breeder, right? And then trained that dog with a really coercive and aversive training methods to be because he, he believed, not only was that in alignment with his ideology, but he believed that that's what he needed to get this dog to be the tough, like, guard dog that he wanted. And then the dog bit a neighbor. And of course the neighbor pursued legal action and the dude bounced, left. The woman with the dog broke up, just left, left her holding the mess.

[00:19:14] Ellen: I have so many words and none of them can be said on this podcast.

[00:19:18] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I don't talk about this case very often because it has taken me a long time to be able to talk about it without just instantly devolving into a rage spiral. But look at me, therapy works, friends. But anyway, so this woman was not necessarily ideologically aligned with me either or not with me, but, with our methods. But she was so beside herself about what to do in this situation that she got, I would say low-key bullied by some people on the internet to work with me because, oh, I remember now. She had tried to, to give the dog to a local rescue group and they were like no, but you have to go see Emily. So I'm working with a dog who has. A bite, a big strong dog with a bite history, with very little positive reinforcement learning history. Which means that this is a dog who doesn't know how to learn, who doesn't explore, try new things, who has no concept of enrichment of any kind with a client who is in the midst of legal trouble and also not. My ICA, like not aligned at all, right? Who's paying me money because basically the rescue group lowkey bullied her into working with me. I was so anxious friends. I was so anxious about this case and I wanted to prove that I was knowledgeable, that I was, that there was a reason that the rescue group required her to work with me. That I did know how to work with Bora Bells, even though everybody in her life had told her that positive reinforcement trainers can't work with this breed. By the time I was working with this client and her dog, it was a hot mess. 

I got in and started working with his dog. And it wasn't just stranger direction directed aggression. It was all the things that you would expect from a dog who had had abusive training, body handling issues, reactivity avoidance pottying away from fam like hiding to potty in the house because of history of punishment for being seen pottying resource guarding. I can't remember. It was like, it just one thing after another, after another, after another, after another, right. Oh sound sensitivity because they had tried, so they had, they had started with an eco shock and then the dog started redirecting on them, so they moved to a beep. And so then anything that beeped was, would get the dog really amped up and, and angry. Hot mess, right? So I was just like a, again, the same mistake that everybody makes. I was like, here's a plan for this. Here's a plan for this. Here's a plan for this. Here's a plan for this, here's a plan for this. And I was doing a plan for every single thing, even though I knew that that was not, I knew how to write a plan addressing 

the underlying causes, but I. What felt really anxious about the fact that the do I was like, oh, this is gonna go to court. I'm gonna have to have proof that like I'm actually doing something about 

this case and I need to prove to the client that I know what I'm talking about. And I need her to feel like she got her money's worth because she's not even sold on this plan. And it went exactly as you would expect it to go. And it, she didn't do any of it. She, sorry. She didn't do any of it. She even told me overtly, and I'm actually really grateful to her for this because most clients in Utah were not communicative. And but she actually told me like, this is really overwhelming to me.

I can't, I don't know how to do this. And I'm really grateful that she did, because that was kind, it was like a slap in the face. It was like a wake up call, like somebody was shaking my shoulders and being like, what are you doing? You know that this isn't right. So we had a frank conversation. I apologized to her.

I was like, you know what? You're right. I was freaked out by the legal stuff, the urgency that you're feeling, the complexity of the case, and I, I realize now that I gave you too much at once. So let's go back and figure out what feels the most urgent to you and how to prioritize this. And I went back and I did exactly what I already know how to do, but that case had just freaked me out of my existing skillset. Right? 

We ended up working together. It was lovely. The neighbor dropped the case because he saw how hard she was working and he recognized that. It was the dude who was causing the problem. Fortunately, we were not, we were in the county that was much more lenient towards dogs with bite histories. So we didn't have like any pressure from the legal system. That dog was never, she hit the end of her. Ability to, to keep going with the training and stuff. And so she settled on a management plans for some of the things. But I got an email from her like two or three years later just saying, I love this dog.

We have such a good relationship. We never would've had this relationship if it weren't for you. And even though like. We live a, a somewhat cloistered life. Like, I'm so grateful and I was like hard sobbing when I read that email because I needed to hear it, but like at that, if she hadn't been direct with me and told me she was overwhelmed, that case would've gone very differently.

So I really am grateful to her in retrospect, for her directness, because otherwise she would've just ran off and been like, yeah, positive reinforcement doesn't work. I tried it. It's too hard. It's too overwhelming, right? 

[00:24:56] Ellen: I've heard you tell elements of that story. Years. I think that's the first time I've heard you tell the whole story.

I would've been so sweaty that entire time because there are so many layers of coercion that are in that, that are playing on everybody ev every body in that experience.

[00:25:20] Emily: And I will say I, I feel a little bit bad at how much trash I talk about Utah on this podcast because there are lovely people there and there are lovely things about the state. But the reason I have so much bitterness is because, well, there's multiple reasons and we're not gonna go into all of them. But one of the things is, is. That exact thing, that there's just so many layers of coercion and it consistently goes bad, and nobody seems to recognize that what they're doing is the reason they're receiving the outcomes, the consequences that they're receiving. And I'm like, how can y'all be so. Like how, like how are you not seeing that?

Like the reason you keep ending up in this situation is because you keep doing the same things over and over again. I can't tell you how many court cases I was involved in in Utah. I was never, I was not in any court cases in Austin. Friends, like, what is going on? So like, I apologize if anybody's listening in Utah and feeling like, I hate you.

I don't, I don't hate you. You're lovely. It, it's the culture of coercion and then. The explanatory fictions that happen to explain the consequences of the coercion, that just sucked my soul dry. 

[00:26:33] Ellen: Yeah. I think that was a good demonstration of the, the naming of the pattern. 

Am I focused on welfare and wellbeing or am I focused on a checklist? And you explicitly said like, I got in there and my checklist was not actually helping. Obviously you wanted to help the animal, but your motivating, potentially your motivating operations were.

Can I cover my behind? Because this is a legal case. Can I meet whatever legal requirements that there're going to be rapidly so that it gives us more time that we are able to work on the other things? Can I make it so that this pet parent feels as though they want to continue with me through providing robust amount of things rather than.

Necessarily a robust amount of change in outcome, which are not simultaneously. The thing also, I'm gonna guess that there was some motivation to do what you thought the rescue or shelter 

would also approve of. So I think on top of the, am I turning it into a checklist? It might also be a secondary question.

Am I seeking approval? 

Rather than outcome, because I know that's where some of mine has come from. Like he can't bark at dogs because I'm gonna say Capital T, capital I, the internet has said that that's a problem. And also he can be home alone now. Like I don't 

[00:27:54] Emily: say you nailed it, that that rescue group would refer out to a lot of different trainers and there was only one other trainer other than me that they referred to that I. Trusted 

their competency, their ethics, all of that stuff. 

And they were at a point where they were starting to see the difference in outcomes between when I worked with those dogs and the colleague that I trusted versus the other trainers they were referring out. So they were starting to rely more heavily on me for the complex cases and sending the easier stuff to the trainers that I, I don't agree with their practices. 

Right. And so you are absolutely right that I had. A fear of like, if I mess this case up, they're gonna go back to referring complex cases to these other trainers who have really, really 

unethical practices.

Right? So yeah. You nailed it. 

[00:28:47] Ellen: Your plan was about avoidance, not about improvement, which means we can go to the next part and put kind of like two plans side by side. So Plan one is the PET centered, dog centered, CAT centered, bird centered plan, and that is focused on what does the individual in front of me need right now?

What can this family unit realistically do? And what is the smallest change that makes the most traction? Back to, we wanna plant our sapling, so what is one thing that we could do that is hopefully going to have a really big impact? And if you are a pet professional, this is an important thought exercise to do frequently and to limit yourself to, if I could only do one thing, one small thing, not a big thing.

Sky does a small thing, but literally one tiny thing that could get me a good impact. What would that be? And then if we look at the anxiety centered plan, it is asking more fo, it's more focused on what could go wrong, what will people think? If I don't include this, who's approval am I searching for? What do I need to cover myself to, to check all my boxes, to feel complete and right.

Rather than making progress, they can look really similar on the surface, but when you dig in, you're gonna find that the motivation between those two, while ultimately we may wanna help the pet, in both of those conditions, one centers you while the other is going to center the pet.

[00:30:19] Emily: Yeah. Yeah.

that's, I, I do I love that you brought that up because It is very much, it's, it's very hard to tell. People who really love the animals and really want the animals to, to do well, that you're making it about you. Because I understand that that can put people in a defensive position of like, what are you talking about?

I'm in this

profession because of, and like and, and my response is yes. And if you are in any way concerned about your reputation or proving yourself to your client or that you're giving them money's worth. You might, you de, you definitely care about the animal and nobody's questioning that, but you're prioritizing yourself and that can be really hard to hear.

And it, and we are trying to say this gently and with love and also coming from a place of like, it us, we're not talking down to you like we're right.

We're right there with 

you. But what happens if we really, truly prioritize the learners in our care is they, they get, we see them be able to make progress in a sustainable way that feels good to them because we are making a plan for them, not for us. 

[00:31:33] Ellen: Yeah, so some telltale signs that you have created an anxiety driven plan. As a professional. I'll also say I have clients that bring me anxiety driven plans, and it is a skill to be able to help a client parse down because you wanna stay in your lane about what you can do with your pet, and also recognize that what the client is asking of themselves is not sustainable.

And we help people with that impact pro that's outside the scope of this particular conversation.

So telltale signs of anxiety driven plans, number one, it addresses every problem at once. So if you were to write down every issue and then you look at the plan, you pretty much have a direct correlation between the number of issues you want to address and the number of things written on that plan.

It requires a level of consistency that real life can't sustain, and I think that is. That is the part where the failure is going to be felt the most because you already know from the GI that this is not gonna happen. Number three, it doesn't account for the human's bandwidth schedule or capacity. Like I said, when I find myself in one of these spirals, I pull up my calendar and I make myself actually put it on a calendar, what my life would look like if I was to implement the plan that I have in my head for my pets, and I That is what helps me break out of it and be like, you don't have time. Like you legitimately don't have time for all of the things that you wanna do. It makes the pet parent feel more guilty, not more capable, and that is not our goal ever at Pet Harmony. I would like to say for behavior professionals, but I can't speak for everyone.

And then the last one, it grows every time something new comes up instead of getting simpler. There are gonna be times where yes, it's gonna grow because something totally out of the, the suite of everything else that you were working on. So like, when Griffey needed Eardrops, that was totally outside of everything that we had worked on.

To date, that was more, but it also meant when Grey needed Eardrops, we dropped something else so that when something got added, something else came off.

[00:33:36] Emily: Yeah, the example that I have used multiple times on this podcast is the client who, when they started working with me, they were doing, they were working with their dog 10 hours a day. It took them 10 hours a day to take care of their dog more 

than a full-time job. 

Right, right. And so the plan that I gave them required them to work with their dog four hours a day, which is bonkers.

I would never have ask any client to work with their dog four hours a day. And I don't mean training four hours a day. Just like all of the care and enrichment and like antecedent arrangement, everything, right? 

But for them it was a reduction by six hours a day. We, we more than halved. Their workload. And so like, yes, sometimes your plan is going to be like pretty bonkers. But I, the litmus test for me is, is it simpler than what they were doing before? 

Right. And, and in that case, the four hour plan was the much simpler plan. And we, and we continued to whittle that down. Right. 

But yes, sometimes you do add, have to add complexities because life is messy. 

But most of the time we can make it really simple and just get to the core of what's going to help them. And I, I think an, an added layer of that is that another thing that we see a lot in PET Pro is actually not just Pet Pro. I just recently, we came back from Clicker Expo and I spoke at Clicker Expo and I don't know how many times. At Clicker Expo, I was asked how do I make sure that my client gets all the information they need and still keep the plan succinct? And the answer to that is like, you can overwhelm clients with education too, not just the plan, but if you feel like they need to know everything and your plan involves like 16 pages of handouts. Explaining all the things that you think they need to know. I promise you they do not need to know all of that. They need less on their plate and more confidence in what they're already doing. They just need to see that what they're doing works. And then if a client asks you for the why, if they ask you to explain it, if they want to more information on why, what they're doing works, then you can provide that education. But it is, it's amazing to me how, again, in my selection bias, it is universal, that when people are entering this field. They feel like they have to explain why everything works to their clients and they have to put it in the training plans. And again, it me like I did that too when I was a, a, a new baby behavior consultant. And when I was, and when I, I asked Susan Friedman, who was one of my mentors. Like about this exact thing and she chuckled and she was like, yeah, it's a sign of being a brand new baby behavior consultant that you feel like you have to explain the why to your clients. Like your clients don't need the why, but what you're going through is a very normal part of the, of the learning process of being in this field. And it was a very gentle, loving way of her telling me like, oh, you're so green, 

[00:36:49] Ellen: Look at you, 

but you acknowledged it and you reflected, and you found it so well done on that.

[00:36:56] Emily: Thanks. But Yeah.

they don't, your, your clients don't need to know why unless they're specifically asking you why. And that's when you pull out those 

handouts with the big explanation of how something works or why you're doing what you're doing or whatever. And that's really important too because even if the plan itself is pretty succinct, but you've still got a 10 page plan that like two pages are the plan and eight pages are the explanations that still overwhelms the client, which means they still don't actually read and utilize the training plan, which means they're not making progress. It has to be something that a client can follow along with, and that is simple enough that they can actually do, even if they do it imperfectly, that they can actually complete the tasks that you give them. And by the way, that is not lowering the bar. It's not lowering expectations. That is skillful scaffolding of. Other people's skills. I just realized I was using skill twice in the same sentence. But that that is what scaffolding looks like is you make it simple. You meet the learner where they're at, you give them what they can handle, and then when they can handle something else, you give them the next thing. That's just how education works.

[00:38:11] Ellen: Yeah, I was working with somebody and they were like my follow up rate. The people who choose to continue with me is not what I want it to be. And so we went and did some troubleshooting. We looked at their initial consultations and I had them run through an exercise to assess like, what are you actually asking of your clients?

And it was too much shocking. It's always too much. My plans were probably even too much sometimes I can think of a couple in the recent past, but that's part of the trial and eval. And the consultant said, but I can't cut anything 'cause this is the bare minimum. And what I told them was, the bare minimum isn't what you think this person needs the bare minimum. Really the maximum is what this person can do, which is not always going to be what we think someone. Needs,

which leads us pet pros to some of the harder questions. The first one, if you're feeling the urge to add one more thing to the plan, ask yourself, is this for the dog? Is this for the cat? Is this for the bird? Is this for the pet parent? Or is this because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't include it?

Am I including this for me rather than for one of the learners that I am currently working with? If it is for you, leave it off. Don't include it unless it is for the dog or the pet parent or the cat or the bird, or whatever species you are working with. You wanna make sure that your plan isn't. Created for your anxiety.

It is created for their learning journey.

[00:39:43] Emily: So I think one of the things that one, one of The reasons that we all have this tendency to just make a plan as comprehensive as possible is because we believe that it's more ethical. If we give our clients all the information and all the skills and teach them how to address everything, we are setting them up to respond to situations in more ethical ways so they don't go rogue and do their own thing. But the reality is that if they can't, if the plan is too much and they don't read it, the plan collapses after two days. Honestly, friends, I think two days might be generous. Sometimes I think maybe the plan just collapsed before they even started it. Right. Because it was too much for them. And so they end up not doing any of it, which is not more ethical.

It's not giving them more ethical responses to the situations at hand. If you give them a simple plan that they can sustain for two months, you are improving the way they respond to their pet's behavior. So how do we build or rebuild a plan that's actually for the animals? That's actually for the pets. Who are, who need the support. We start with an audit question. So look at your current plan or the plan that you're about to write, and for each item ask If I removed this, would the dog or cat or pared or horse be meaningfully worse off, or would I just feel less covered? Anything that's there for the second reason is worth examining.

We need to go back to that.

[00:41:23] Ellen: The next thing is to ask what is the minimum effective plan? So I already mentioned the minimum and or maximum effective plan is the one that your client can actually do, not the one that you think that they should get, but what is the one thing if done consistently and correctly?

Would move this dog forward the most. Start there. Let that work. Let that start to make changes in the environment under which you, your client, and the pet are working in. This isn't lazy, this isn't, I don't know, throw any other adjective. Yeah. Label in there. This is how sustainable progress actually happens.

When we make a change, we expect a change. If you are making changes and you're not expecting change. That's not how this works. 

[00:42:10] Emily: Right. What, what are you doing it for? 

[00:42:12] Ellen: right? And so like, let's revisit that. Start with one thing. If done consistently, what would make the biggest difference?

[00:42:18] Emily: And then the next thing is to design, not just for the non-human learners in your care, but also the human caregivers who are taking care of them, the human guardians who are taking care of them. I, again, I said care twice in once, and it, I don't know what's up with me today. So a good plan accounts for how much time the family realistically has their stress level. Their relationship with their pet, their history with training, their, just their bandwidth in general, and also I would say their neuro type. So if you build a plan for some imaginary super family who can do all the things, they have unlimited time and energy and bandwidth. They absorb and learn and can do skills very easily.

They have zero anxiety. That's not a good plan. That's a fantasy. And there's a time and place for fantasies, but, but working with clients is not that time or place.

[00:43:15] Ellen: Pet parents. If you are working with a professional and you are feeling overwhelmed if you have not talked about it already, remember what Emily said earlier that that was one of the things she was eternally grateful for with her client in Utah. Being like, I don't EI don't know how to do this.

I'm overwhelmed. Because there are gonna be times where we miscalculate, there are gonna be times where we don't necessarily either remember to ask or, if I've had clients that have. Problems with sleep. And so we don't know what phase of their sleep problems we are gonna be in, and the plan needs to adjust to the reality that is currently there.

So a plan that was great for a week ago could be quite, in fact, terrible for this time. And it's not anybody's fault. Conditions changed. It's not failure, it's self-awareness. So if you have a plan that's overwhelming. Go back and ask yourself the same questions. Is this going to meaningfully impact my pet's quality of life, their welfare and their wellbeing? Or am I trying to cover something for myself?

[00:44:20] Emily: Yeah. And I wanna emphasize once again that building anxiety driven plans is not a character flaw. It doesn't mean that you. Are a bad person. If you had a moment where you prioritized your anxiety over your learner's experience, that's just a really common human experience. And it happens to all of us, and it still happens to those of us who are speaking right now. And what it actually means is that you care a lot and you feel out of control. So the goal isn't to stop caring. Your goal is to channel that care into something that your learners can actually benefit from, so that you also get the everything that you want to get and the reason that you're making the anxiety driven plans, you will actually get, if you. If you create instead learner driven plans, so it will, your, your clients will feel like you're competent. They will, will feel like they got their, their money's worth. They will feel like you know what you're doing and that you have helped them. All of the things that all of the motivators for the anxiety driven plans actually happen when you prioritize your learners.

[00:45:32] Ellen: When we're overwhelmed, we build plans for our anxiety. That's the tldr. And for those of you that don't experience anxiety, congratulations. I, maybe you skipped this episode and you're not actually hearing me say this, but we want to build those plans for our pets and for the life that we actually live, not maybe the life that we are necessarily grieving.

So I know for me, every time I'm like, there are so many things I want for my dogs' lives and I can't do all of those things. Some of that comes with an element of grief that. The conditions aren't that I can spend four hours a day out in the woods with my dogs. Not that they would like to do that anyway, 'cause reasons, but like, that's the time for fantasy.

Those are the fantasies we can have. The most useful thing to do is reflect on your plan and say, who is this plan for? Is it for my pets or for me? If it is for you. If it brings you joy, I'm not here to take joy away from you, but mostly what we're talking about here are the plans that lead to distress, and we don't want that for you.

[00:46:35] Emily: Yeah, so this week. Look at whatever plan or approach you're currently using for your own pet or with a client. Pick one thing that's on there that primarily makes you feel covered. Not, not necessarily for the animal as much as making you feel like it, like it's a CYA thing, right? And then ask yourself what would happen if you let that one thing go? So you've got your homework for this week. Next week we're gonna bring this all together with the question everyone wants answered, what do you work on first and why? We're gonna give you a thinking framework, not a protocol. We just don't need any more protocols, friends, but we do need more frameworks. So we're gonna give you a framework for how to make that call and that will be happening next week on May 18th.

And if this episode hit a little too close to home and You can think of somebody else who might also feel lovingly attacked by it go ahead and send it to them. Chances are. You do know another trainer or pet parent who has written a plan at 11:00 PM in a mild state of panic and wondered why it wasn't being followed. So this episode is for them too. Go ahead and and do them a solid and, and share it with them. Alright, we'll see you next week.

[00:47:56] 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.