Being positive about positive reinforcement (when someone is wrong on the internet)

Kristi and Zazie chat about the need to be positive when talking about dog training and cat behaviour, and how they cope when someone is wrong on the internet.

We talked about:

• The value of positive reinforcement, and gratitude for the positive reinforcement we get for the podcast
• How to cope when someone is badly wrong on the internet and the post takes off
• The idea of a DRI for ourselves: differential reinforcement of an incompatible behaviour 
• The idea of a revenge blog and how we have both written some of them
• The value of likes, comments, and shares on social media and the difference they can make to the algorithm
• The need to stay informed about science and the scientific process

Also mentioned in this show:

• Ep65 on bothsidesism https://www.buzzsprout.com/2183505/episodes/19661849
• Ep61 How to evaluate the scientific research on dogs and cats https://www.buzzsprout.com/2183505/episodes/19388459
• Kristi's blog post on good alternatives to e-fencing: https://www.kristibenson.com/blog/2019/11/4/good-alternatives-to-e-fencing-dog-training-experts-weigh-in
• Zazie's blog post on science communication: To promote positive reinforcement on dog training, teach, engage, and amplify https://www.companionanimalpsychology.com/2019/06/to-promote-positive-reinforcement-dog.html
• Zazie's post on why it's dogs' happiness, not obedience, that counts: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/fellow-creatures/202004/why-dogs-happiness-not-obedience-is-what-counts

The books we recommend in this episode are:

• Memorial Park by Louisa Scarr
• Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging, and Loving this World by Rona Maynard

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Zazie: Hello, welcome to The Pawsitive Post in Conversation, the show about how to have a better relationship with your dog and cat. I'm Zazie Todd, author of the books Bark!, Wag, and Purr and creator of Companion Animal Psychology Blog.

My co host, Kristi Benson is a dog trainer and anthropologist and she also works at the Academy for Dog Trainers. We can't give advice on your pet so if you have concerns see your dog trainer, cat behaviorist or veterinarian as appropriate.

Thanks for joining us today.

We're going to talk today about how important it is to be positive in dog training, cat behaviour, anything animal related really, and I think it applies beyond that. But we did a recent episode about bothsidesism and we got some lovely positive feedback and that has inspired this episode.

So welcome to The Pawsitive Post in Conversation. I'm Zazie Todd. I'm joined as always by my co host, Kristi Benson.

Hey Kristi, it was lovely to see you in person recently.

Kristi: Yeah, we had a nice visit in Vancouver. I thought you were going to ask something about Apricat who happens to be on my lap. So then I had to quickly switch gears too.

Yes, it was lovely to see you.

Zazie: It is good to know that Apricat is with us as usual too.

Kristi: Supervising.

Zazie: Yes, supervising. Making sure that we say things correctly.

So we had this episode recently and we talked about bothsidesism in dog training and we talked about the fact that the evidence is very clear on dog training methods that it's much better for the dog and for the human animal relationship for people to use reward based methods.

And it's very clear evidence and this position has been adopted by so many different animal behavior, welfare and veterinary groups around the world.

And so if we're talking about dog training, we don't have an obligation to talk about the other side.

So in a lot of journalistic practices people are taught that they have to talk about both sides of an issue. But when one of those sides actually is widely accepted, there's no need to talk about the other side because that's just introducing doubt that isn't there.

It's not doing anyone any favors. So we were really lucky. We got some lovely feedback from that. People sent messages saying how much they had enjoyed listening to it and that was really lovely.

I was really glad to get that.

And it's always very nice when we get positive feedback on things. So thank you to those people who let us know that they enjoyed that episode and that has inspired this episode because we got talked talking about the importance of having a positive message and it kind of relates to what we were talking about before.

And it's actually also something that I teach my students when I'm teaching at Canisius University,

where I teach communicating anthrozoology to a really wonderful bunch of students every time. It's been an absolutely amazing group of students.

And one of the things that I teach them is about the importance of having a positive message.

And I think it's so important,

especially now, because people get really sucked into negative things on social media and we all do. I'm not criticizing anyone. It's very hard not to get dragged into some of that.

But having a positive message helps to change people's minds. People can be motivated by joy rather than fear is another way of looking at it as well. So I know you agree that a positive message is a really important thing to have.

Kristi: Yeah, absolutely.

And I also agree that it can be hard not to be pulled in.

I think recently somewhere, you know, I saw probably somewhere on my feed, it was like, you know, rage baiting is a thing. It does, you know, it does pull people's attention in, but it actually is damaging in a broader sense.

And I think that's a useful message to get out there that we shouldn't necessarily just be like, well, rage baiting is a thing, so let's use it for our own good.

Like, that's not,

that's not.

That's not going to be good for us, it's not going to be good for our colleagues and it's probably not going to be good for dogs.

Zazie: Yeah. And there was some research quite a long time ago now about negative comments,

which could be classed as rage bait on posts about science.

And simply having negative comments on a post can cause people to no longer agree with the science that's presented in the piece. It causes people to have doubts about it.

So it actually can be quite damaging. And of course, in this day and age, we also have to be aware that of course, sometimes we know that rage bait is coming from our colleagues, but we don't necessarily know the source.

We also know that there are even state actors busy putting rage bait on all kinds of definitely political posts. So you never know if you don't know the person who said it, you never know what their aim is behind it.

And so there are lots of positive messages that we could spread about dog training, about cat behavior, about how to care for your pets.

I think obviously the idea of making your pet happy is one of those that is quite important and a good way of getting a positive message across.

And I Think it's always really good to give people something that they can do.

And if you read negative stuff, you read all the ragey comments, it can make you feel really quite depressed.

I think it's not just damaging in terms of how it makes you think about the topic, but in terms of how it makes you feel as well.

And it can be so depressing. And I try really hard now to just hide those things from Facebook when it shows them. But we all know that the algorithm encourages,

you know, if it gets lots of comments, then that's what's going to spread. And that's kind of unfortunate that the algorithms are primed to do that, because that means we're going to be seeing these posts.

Kristi: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I know something that's come up a few times in the sort of the student groups at the academy is,

I think when people are sort of new to the dog training zone and you know, they come in and they come to a place where there is a really big focus on positive reinforcement and on welfare, on dog's joy,

and then they'll see something out in, you know, maybe they're being exposed to other trainers for the first time in,

you know, on this, on this level. And they'll see something, they'll be like, oh my goodness, someone said something wrong on the Internet. Should I hop on? You know, and you know, there is quite an effort and I know from yourself, absolutely.

But also from the rest of. I think, you know, people who have been.

Are a little bit long in the tooth in the sound to just say it's,

don't do that. It's not going to be worth. You're not going to convince anybody, you know, you're going to give that post, you know, or that, that that person even a greater spread if, if you hop in there and start arguing.

And so one of the ideas I think that sort of come out of these discussions is, is we need to, to DRI ourselves. So when I say dri, I'm talking about differential reinforcement of an incompatible behavior, which is,

we're not using it entirely correct here, but it's a protocol that we regularly use with dogs. So if dogs are just like making the wrong choice and doing something out of joy, you know, not a fearful behavior, but say they're jumping up onto a human to joyfully greet them or they're barking joyfully to get, you know, a ball thrown or something.

We can use this sort of amazing protocol where we just train the dog to do something else, something that is incompatible with the behavior that we don't want. You know, so we train a dog to sit instead of jumping up, and then we can greet them in the joyful,

happy way that we want. Or we train a dog to, you know, bring the ball to us and maybe lay down so that we can then throw it for them.

You know, so there's this, this idea of you're doing something else that brings joy, that gets you what you want, but that is incompatible with going out and in our case, in our, with going out and getting on the Internet and fighting with somebody who just wants us to fight with them because it gives them more of what they want and what they need.

So, yeah, we, we have sort of developed this like, you know, in me in particular, I am very big on. I see something that makes me angry and now I've just. I.

It's a very strong behavior.

I just immediately go, click, change the channel. I'm going to go do something else instead.

Zazie: I think that's really good. And I'm getting much better at hiding these things on social media and telling Facebook, I don't want to see this or even snooze this person for a while.

Don't show me this person for a while. And I find that quite helpful because otherwise I find it quite depressing. And Facebook doesn't actually show me that much anyway. But just as an example of how comments matter,

there's a positive way in which some people have been commenting on my page and it's made a big difference. So you know how my book Bark appears on Coronation street and I am still so excited even after all of this time, that it keeps on appearing on Coronation street on the bookshelves in Roy's rolls.

So still every time it's there, I take a photo and I post it to my socials. And what has happened is that there are two people in particular,

and thank you so much to these two people. They comment on it every single.

And they usually comment quite quickly after I've posted it.

And it turns out that some of my best performing posts on Facebook are actually photos of my book on Coronation Screen.

Kristi: Giving the people what they want.

Zazie: Yeah. So it's kind of like turning my page into a bit of a Corrie fan page. But I am a Corrie fan, so that's that. You know, I don't mind that at all.

And I think,

you know, these, these people, they leave quite witty comments sometimes. And one of them I know in real life and the other one I know from, from my blog and social media.

And so on. But I'm really grateful to both of them and because they do it every time and it just shows what a difference it makes. And I think that shows why it's so important not to get drawn into some of these rage bait conversations because it's just spreading them further.

And you're right. So a DRI is, is an excellent idea. And I think a DRI also,

like we would be rewarding the dog for doing the different behaviors. So we can also think of how would we reward ourselves. So maybe writing a blog post about something can be enjoyable in itself,

but also once we've done that, do we want to reward ourselves? So I sometimes give myself a piece of chocolate or something just right, I finished this. So, you know, I'm going to reward myself with a nice piece of dark chocolate or something like that.

Just because it helps.

Kristi: Yeah, yeah, I think.

And also if you do DRI yourself, and we're going to be talking more about this, about the specifics of how we DRI ourselves,

if you do post something online, which I think is like a reasonable DRI, there's certainly like, go have a bath and,

you know, give yourself a treat of some sort. And just for not responding online is perfect as well. But we're going to dive a bit more into the how can you actively counter the misinformation you're seeing online but not engage,

you know, in negativity and post negative things?

But my personal all time favorite, and I haven't blogged for a while because blogging has changed. The environment of blogging has changed since AI, But I used to do a lot of what I would call revenge blogs.

Zazie: I love that word.

Kristi: If I see something online that makes me ragey, instead of posting something negative, I would instead write a revenge blog. And not in a I can't believe that this idea is still out there, you know, kind of way, but write a positive blog about something that directly counteracts what I see as the problem,

you know, what I felt like raging against.

And then post that and just the satisfaction it would give me. And sometimes it was, it was sometimes only I would be able to tell that it was a revenge blog.

You know, it would just be a blog about a nice topic that, you know, is good for dogs or,

you know, a specific training technique, something like that. But I would know that it was a revenge block. And sometimes I would, sometimes it would be very direct and then I would wait a couple of weeks to post it just because I was like, I didn't, I didn't want to be seen as treacly revenge blocking.

Even though that's exactly what I was doing.

Zazie: Yeah.

Kristi: So I know when we started talking about doing this podcast,

I jotted something down that said like, you know, we need to discuss why revenge is a dish best served warm and comfortable.

Zazie: Yeah. But that delay can be helpful to make sure that no one else, you know, that it really is just you putting out the message that you want to push out rather than it being seen as a response to something.

And maybe I should take this moment to just say that sometimes these podcasts are recorded quite a bit ahead of time. So this one is only being recorded a couple of weeks ahead of time.

But for example, our Both sides isn't one. It actually had to sit there for various reasons. It had to sit there for several months.

And I feel like whenever it happened to be published was going to turn out to be a good time for it to be published because unfortunately there are so often these negative conversations in dog training.

So whenever it appeared it was going to be relevant and topical.

But I think from thinking about how people should,

you know,

treat their dogs, treat their cats, anything we have that's a positive message about how to better care for your cat is always topical. It's always relevant anyway. So do you feel like explaining the served warm aspect?

Yeah.

Kristi: So I think the hardest hitting revenge blogs are blogs that are just standalone and evergreen. So instead of being like, oh, I'm, you know, talking about why so and so said something wrong or this idea, I can't believe this idea about dog training still persists to just be like,

hey, here's a great way to deal with your dog who happens to be barking to get the ball thrown or jumping up on you at the, when you, when you come in the door.

So create a happy or a, you know, doesn't even need to be happy, but create a positive message about how, how to sort of like increase your dog's joy and in your life or to handle, you know, sort of a mismatch between a dog's behavior and human behavior positively.

So it's very much about,

about just addressing these things in a, in a good way.

Zazie: And I think that's important too because it means it's always relevant and always timely. Whereas if you wrote it, oh, so and so said this as your starting point, it begins on a negative thing and that will put some people off.

And also it dates it and you know, you're a post about what to do about a dog who's jumping up. It's always going to be relevant. Whereas a post about someone said this about dogs jumping up, that's not always going to be relevant.

So it wouldn't be as effective a response if it was dated in that way,

both in terms of timeliness and in terms of giving people negative feelings. I think people really like to get positive messages about what they can do. They are more likely to be able to take those messages on board and say, oh,

this is good information and we hope that they will share them. So I think we do need people to make sure that they pay attention to what the algorithm does.

And if you actually like something, do like it, but also comment on it and share it as well. And that does actually make a big difference.

But yeah,

I think if anyone was to go through my blog looking for posts that were written in response to something, I don't think they actually could tell because very often, like, you see something and you think, oh, why do people have this misconception?

Or why do people have this information wrong? And it maybe might prompt me to write something explaining something better. But as you say, it's written as a standalone piece. I don't think anyone would be able to say, oh, that's because such and such a person said such and such.

That's why she wrote it. It's because there is this message to get across and it's maybe made me just think a bit harder about the things that are important for people to know about their dog or to know about their cat.

And I think that's the most important thing, really.

It's what's good, useful information because it helps people stay cheerful and it helps people not get burnout as.

And it, you know, that is such a big problem for, for our profession. So I think you've definitely done a

Kristi: better job than me. I.

If I look back upon all my blogs, there's definitely some that are very.

That don't meet this standard. We'll just.

But hey, I'm going to forgive myself for those sometimes. And also I think it's important that,

that when you.

For dog professionals, when we see stuff like this, we do need to talk it out with our friends and colleagues. We do need a space to sort of have these conversations to express the sadness we feel and the anger we feel, you know, So I don't want to say that just bottle everything up,

you know, I think it's important that we have safe spaces for dog trainers, but I think we just have to make sure that we don't participate in the further creation of this as Much as possible,

you know, and we have to, you know, I think even as a human myself, I find I can sink into that and just want more and more of it and just be, you know, and more ragey.

And I think I have to work to not,

you know,

just always go to that spot.

Zazie: Yeah, I agree. And I think that's a really important thing to say, that we're not suggesting that people bottle it up. It is important to be able to talk about these things.

And I think sometimes it can actually be quite a challenge to turn it around and make it into something positive. And maybe a bit of time needs to go by as well before you can think about how to deal with it.

And sometimes you just need to.

Certainly for me, sometimes I just need to turn the Internet off for a bit and go and sit with my cat and cuddle with my cat or something, or take the dog for a sniff.

He doesn't really walk, so just a little sniff, then back in again.

And that can really help to bring a change in mood and a change in frame of mind for thinking about things. And of course, for me,

I think some of the biggest ones are when people are misrepresenting the science about dog training or cat training on the Internet. Because we've all seen the risks firsthand that come from people using the wrong approach.

And it can be so distressing to hear that people mistakenly think it's okay to use aversives or mistakenly think it even helps to use aversives. And there are so many side effects that people risk they do that.

So that's one of the things that I find hardest. And in this age of AI, I even sometimes see people presenting totally imaginary made up articles to present,

you know, to represent their viewpoint. And I think people trust AI too much to come up with an argument for them. And, you know, like this journal doesn't exist, or this journal exists but that paper is not in it.

And so you have to look really, really carefully, much more carefully than you used to when people are presenting things about the science. And it keeps me more cheerful to be thinking about the positive things.

Otherwise I think we'd all just go want to hide in a hole and not do anything. And that's no good for anyone.

Kristi: Yeah, people misrepresenting science, science that demonstrates the importance for an animal's welfare, to use positive reinforcement and to avoid using aversives and avoid using techniques that scare and harm dogs and cats.

I think, think when I see people misrepresenting that science or it sometimes it even Feels deliberate, you know, like it.

It's. It's enraging.

Zazie: It is.

Kristi: And I think it's easy to try and hop on that and fight them. So I think this, I think this is a great scenario in which I would say I need to DRI myself.

If I wanted. If I want to do something to counteract this, I would DRI myself. And I know you and I were talking about the specifics of what we would do, so I'm curious to hear how you would.

Zazie: What.

Kristi: What would you do in this case to sort of like, get.

Zazie: Get.

Kristi: Get those feelings out?

Zazie: Well, I mean, sometimes I'm looking at the information to see what specifics of,

like, what does it tell me about how to word something or what kinds of concerns people have to make sure that if I write something positive, I'm actually addressing those concerns.

Because,

of course, people do struggle with their pets.

They do struggle with their pet behavior through no fault of their. Their own or just from not having the right information or enough information.

And at least we are in a place now in terms of the information that's available. So that is one thing that is a positive,

and that is something else that I try to remind myself of as well, because sometimes it feels like there isn't much progress and really progress isn't fast enough, but there is a lot of progress.

So looking at the colleagues and the organizations who are doing great work, I find that very inspiring.

So I like to see those things and I might go and look at what other people are doing as well. And then I do usually need a bit of time for something like that to think about it.

Actually quite a slow writer, to be honest.

It does take me time to think of something. I'm not someone who just sits down and all the words fall out of my head. I wish that would be so much easier.

But I usually have to think about it for quite a bit. And so then I'm thinking, okay, so what do people need to know? How are other people putting this across?

What's going to be the best way to get it across to help people understand what they can do to make a difference to their dog or to their cat?

So some of my blog posts definitely have come out from that.

I actually have a series of posts about communication which really came from my teaching at Kinesius. But I've got one in particular which is, I use the phrase teach, engage and amplify.

So think about what you want to teach people,

do it in an engaging way, and make sure you've got a message that can be amplified.

And then at the end of it I actually wrote, then go make yourself a cup of tea, have a piece of chocolate or a cake or something like that to reward yourself for doing it.

So I will put that link in the show notes in case anyone wants to read it. But that kind of is the approach that I take. And of course some things do better than others and I can't really predict what is going to do well either on my blog or on social media.

Sometimes it's the things that you don't expect to do well are actually the things that take off. So that can be quite surprising too.

Yeah, but I don't think anyone could tell because I have these messages that I'm always wanting to tell people about anyway. Happy dogs, happy cats, use positive reinforcement, have a enrichment and things like that give them opportunities to use their nose.

And so a lot of the responses to things will actually come out as one of those things anyway. So they come out as things that I would always be talking about anyway.

And I think that's the other thing though is that repetition is really helpful. And it doesn't matter if you're saying the same thing.

We have to keep getting the same messages out. So sometimes I'll even read something and I'll think, oh well, this other post I wrote before is actually very irrelevant and I'll just go and share that instead.

Oh, and there's this specific example of that is that for Psychology Today,

when my first book WAG came out,

I wrote a piece about why dog's happiness, not obedience, is what counts.

And I think most people would agree with that message, but not everybody does. And so I have a rule that every time someone tells me that it's more important that the dog is well behaved than that they are happy, then I share that post.

So that's like a post that's already ready. I don't have to go away and write a revenge blog or whatever. Just think, well, here's one that I prepared earlier and I can just go and share that for sure.

Yeah,

yeah. So a back catalog helps too,

for sure.

Kristi: Yeah, yeah, I do the same. I go, I, I go back and I have a couple of blogs that are about, you know, shock fences or something and I can just bloop, put those up.

But about this specific scenario of someone on the Internet misinterprets science,

science that supports, supports positive reinforcement.

And so they're misinterpreting it and they're sort of like saying we should, you know, it's okay to use aversives.

I was trying to think how would I. What would I choose to sort of DRI myself? And I think if I was feeling quite touchy, I would blog about what the article actually says.

So what the article actually says about positive reinforcement or even if I was feeling less touchy just about doing something, positive reinforcement. So very like general.

Just write a good blog about how positive reinforcement works in, you know, know,

in training.

I think I, I wouldn't do this, but I think it would be interesting and I'd suggest if someone was knowledgeable to do this, to blog about science interpretation.

So I think that's a skill that is harder than people think and it's more important than people think, especially right now. So what is science interpretation? How. What is science communication?

You know, flags to look out for how, how we should go about picking the people who are our middlemans between the science and ourselves.

I think that's quite useful just sharing a post from.

There are some great organizations that talk and teach about science communication.

So go and follow their page, go and you know,

share one of their posts. You can easily share stuff about science communication, about good quality science communication that I think is, is a little bit of a, of a,

you know, buffer to, to poor science communication, which is what we're kind of talking about here here. You know, poor science communication with an agenda.

So you can also share posts from your favorite trainers and ask others to do the same. So if you're like oh no,

this post or this narrative is blowing up in my feeds, let's blow something else up instead. And a lot of people I think do respond somewhat favorably if you just ask them to do something.

You know, like people tend to be doom scrolling and they don't necessarily realize that,

that the things that will actually help are liking and sharing and commenting. So sort of giving people direction to do that from someone from your, you know, your favorite trainer who, who's directly counteracting this misinformation.

Um, and then I think sort of in the just the straight up just do something completely else. Share a nice video of yourself in influencer style doing something really cute with your dog, your dog doing something cute, your dog training something cute like even that level,

even if you just know it's yourself like I'm doing this instead can be I think quite powerful.

Zazie: Yeah, I think that's a lovely idea. And I just want to add something else though which is that I think it is still important to counteract some of these arguments.

So for example, if there is a post on Facebook where something is wrong.

Just having one single person in the comments pointing out that this argument doesn't make any sense has been shown in some fields. It has been shown to make a difference to how people then interpret that information.

But if that voice is there saying that, then you can always just go and like that comment instead of joining in. And certainly that's not an angry kind of comment, that's a correcting information kind of comment.

Or that in itself should be like a positive comment saying, actually this is what's important. And the phrasing of it, if it's positive, that can be very helpful as well.

So I'm not saying never comment on things, but. But certainly don't get sucked into rage bait cycles, because I think that's not good for us.

And I think you're absolutely right about having a better understanding of science. It can kind of help to inoculate people against some of these arguments. And science is complicated,

really complicated. And we actually did an episode earlier this year about the design of studies.

Was it a revenge podcast? Well, I'll leave it to our listeners to decide.

Kristi: You'll never know.

Zazie: But we just wanted to talk about some of the designs of studies, the different types of designs that there are, and help people to have an understanding of that. Because I think,

you know, it really helps if you don't personally have a scientific background. It can be quite complicated to understand,

you know, what matters and what doesn't matter.

And no study ever is perfect. So there are always going to be flaws with every study. That's why science is an iterative procedure and we learn from, you know, there's always a need for more research,

but I think that is helpful. So.

And I think that can be even from a different field. So having a better understanding of science, like about dog training, will probably help you better understand some of the health science pieces that you see or climate science pieces or whatever.

So I think just any kind of explanations of how science is done and how it's done well, I think can be really helpful in making sure that people can interpret things better,

can think about things for themselves. And it's much more fun when you can think about things for yourselves. I think so, yeah. And I'll put a link to that podcast about research methods in the show Notes as well, in case anyone wants to go back and listen to it,

because that actually was another one that we got some really nice feedback on and that people said that they enjoyed. So thank you again to our listeners who send these Lovely comments.

We really like to hear it. And you can always drop me an email out or Kristi, or leave a comment on our socials or if you're listening on the podcast, you can leave us a voicemail and on YouTube, of course you can drop a comment below.

So I guess it's time for us to move on to the book section. So what have you been reading recently that you loved?

Kristi: Okay, so I just finished Memorial park by Louisa Scarr, which is a British murder mystery type book and it's the, the middle book in the, in the series. And we're.

We in the first Bark! Fest. We talked about the first book, and in this Bark! Fest this year we're going to be talking about or we have just guesses coming out afterwards.

We have just spoken about the last book. So I, I was catching up by reading the middle book. So yeah, I'm gonna. Not sure if you're gonna be able to see it.

Memorial park by Louisa Scarr. It was so good. It's. It's just my level of like angsty enough, but not so angsty. I think if things get too angsty, I, I just kind of turn off at some point.

But it's quite long. But even with it being that long and even with it being quite angsty, I was still into it the entire time. So a quality. Listen good.

Zazie: I think she's an amazing writer and I love the way she writes about the police dogs as well. So,
 yeah, I'm really pleased that we've got to speak to her again for this Bark! Fest. Yeah. So good. I'm glad you've been reading that.

Kristi: I had like 15 more minutes in my life where I was like, maybe I should get like a working cocker. And then I was like, nope, that's a terrible idea.

But that's how good it is. You know, it makes you go, I wonder.

Zazie: Yeah.

Yeah. And I love how she writes about dogs. And I believe there is another book coming in the series soon, so that's good news too.

Okay, so I've been reading a memoir.

I'm going to hold it up. Nice dog on the cover there. It's called Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging and Loving this World by Rona Maynard, who is Canadian, lives in Toronto.

Not a dog person.

Never had as an adult, never had a dog. Her husband always wanted a dog. So when she retires, her husband is like, okay, now we need to get a dog.

And so they adopt a rescue dog who is very lively, very lovely, but very lively, needs lots of long walks and so it's just about what it means to her to adopt this dog and the way in which she falls in love with the dog.

So it's actually really, really lovely from that perspective. And she goes on lots of long walks around Toronto. So she also writes about how she gets to know other people in the neighborhood, including some of the unhoused people in the neighborhood, just because she's always on the streets and always seeing the same people.

So it's a really. I really enjoyed it. It's all about how much she loves the dog, but also it makes her kind of reflect a bit on her own life and how she's changed over the years as well.

The only thing is at some point she does go to a dog trainer and unfortunately, unfortunately dog training is not regulated. So she gets some rather strange advice.

I mean, it could have been worse, but she gets the advice to tug the leash and then give the dog a treat.

And of course no one should be tugging on any dog's leash at any point. But then a bit later in the book, she does it actually brilliantly from a show don't tell perspective.

A 10 year old tells her off for tugging on the dog's leash and basically says to her,

you wouldn't like it if somebody did that to you. Why are you doing that to your dog?

So that works out well. So I enjoyed the book. It really nice, really nice book. So yeah, cool.

Kristi: Go ten year old.

Zazie: Yes, definitely. Yeah, it's a good moment in the book and there are lots of cute moments about the dog in the book too.

So today I'd like to give a special shout out to our listeners in Spokane, Washington. Thank you for joining us and wherever you are in the world, we're super happy to have you here.

And as you've heard, we love getting your feedback on the show. So please keep that coming. We'd love to hear your ideas for future episodes as well. If you've got any, just leave us a comment and we will see you next time.

Kristi: Bye bye.

Zazie: Thank you for listening to The Pawsitive Post in Conversation. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to the show and write us a review via your podcast app. For the show notes, visit companionanimalpsychology.com this show was produced by Zazie Todd.

The music is Melody from Paris by Studio Lebus. See you next.