What does it mean to be a holistic dog trainer? To Annie, it means addressing issues using what we know about the science of behavior as it applies to both  dogs and humans, and looking at the whole picture of a dog's life in order to address issues. One alternative approach involves narrowly focusing on getting rid of a problem using punishment, which can produce new unwanted behaviors which are then part of the whole picture, too. Sometimes, that whole picture contains people who don't see that they're part of the whole picture, and Annie has found this can be tricky terrain to navigate as a dog trainer ... especially when those people are family members. Annie opens up about how she has learned to keep quiet about all things relating to dogs when she is with certain people in her family, and attempts to take a holistic view of a problem behavior they've dealt with in different ways: barking. 
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Partial Transcript:
Annie:
I recorded this episode a few weeks ago, and then I kind of hesitated about whether or not I should post it because it has to do with my family. And it’s tricky to talk about real live people, and I’m not eager to offend anyone or get into arguments. So after I recorded it, I thought, you know, let’s just let this one sit for a few weeks so that I can think about whether or not I want to go there. And I decided that the beauty of the podcast [laughs] as a medium is that you really have to show up and be interested in order to listen to a podcast at all. It takes some effort and it’s kind of in a lot of cases on, at least this podcast is like a one-way conversation where I get to sit alone in a room and tell you what I think about something. 
If you disagree with me, if you think I’m a jerk, you don’t have to keep listening, and you never have to listen again.  And if you have no interest in what I think about dog training, then you don’t ever have to listen to begin with, and frankly, I think my family falls into that latter category. So I’ve really learned to bite my tongue when anything about dogs comes up in conversation when I am with many people in my family, because it’s just not worth having an argument.  Even if it means suppressing my thoughts and feelings, it’s worth it for the sake of having a relationship at all and maintaining some degree of peace. 
But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to have my own thoughts and feelings going on. And this isn’t something that I have a few thoughts about.  I have a lot of thoughts about it. I have a whole business devoted to a science-based approach to dog training, a behavior based approach to dog training. It’s pretty much my entire life. So I guess I decided I’m not going to suppress an entire part of my life all the time. And if the people mentioned, although unnamed, [laughs] in this episode are interested in what I think, they can listen to my one way side of a conversation whenever they please, and they’re welcome to record their own podcasts on their points of view. I would actually be interested in hearing that. 
Full transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast

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