Annie's life has two speeds right now. You'll find her physically trapped underneath her two young daughters using a suite of remote treat dispensers to train her dog, or she's at a local co-working space in a tiny room alone, talking to herself. In this bonus episode, on the one-year anniversary of her beloved dog Amos passing, she is in the latter mode, recording a kind of phone call to her late father, who she thinks would've enjoyed learning what she's learned about the Youtube star Blippi, aka Stevin John, fka Steven or "Steezy" Grossman (no relation). A line of thought about loving those who are no longer alive leads her to discuss the nature of pet love as something that exists inside of us and how the expression and feeling of that love is, in many ways, projection of something that doesn't go away when someone gone. She somehow relates this both to Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian's recent public display of their love of the movie True Romance and the way in which Nabokov's letters to his wife and to his mistress were sort of fungible. Also: She talks about how the app Duo Lingo is manipulating our behavior in a good way and she reveals the not-so-secret key to getting better at anything, which she only really understood after she became a dog trainer.  Want to use a remote trainer to train YOUR dog while your kids are climbing on you? Get a Treat and Train at http://schoolforthedogs.com/TT
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Partial Transcript:
Annie:
I'm sitting in a vertical phone booth, coffin-like, although rather brightly lit, tiny, windowless room in a We Work. If you can call this a room. I guess actually it does have windows, but not external windows. And I feel like my life rhythm is funny right now. I'm either in a spot like this, alone, either staring at a screen or talking to myself as I am now, or I am home underneath two small children, often literally lying down underneath them, it seems.
Although to bring it back to dog training, I have set up a Pet Tutor and two Treat and Trains in my apartment because I feel like I have so little time to devote to training Poppy. And so I've been trying to use these moments where I'm like paralyzed under the two girls to do push button training, basically triggering the Treat and Train, one of the Treat and Trains.
I have one on her bed, one in her crate, and then like her relaxation mat. So like go to bed, go to crate, go to mat. I just sort of have her going from one to the other with this hilarious, like all these buttons that I'm wearing, one for each dispenser. And it's, it's ridiculous, but I think it's been good for her. If only because when I have the two of them piled on me, like I don't also want her piled on me, which she has a tendency to do cause she likes to be snuggly. Anyway.
But that moment is not this moment. This is the isolated-in-a-coffin moment. And I just wanted to share a couple things. One is that this is the one year anniversary of Amos dying today. And so I've been thinking a lot about him, but of course I think a lot about him every day. And I guess just, you know, feeling those feelings.

Full Transcript at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast

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