Hello there. Thank you for joining me today. You're listening to Drinking from the Toilet, and I'm your host host Hannah Branigan. This week we're

getting real with Amy Cook PhD. Amy has been training dogs for over 20 years. She

earned a PhD in psychology from UC Berkeley. Her research focused on the

dog human relationship and its effects on problem-solving strategies dogs employ.

Amy is a certified dog behavior consultant

through the IAABC, I think I got that right, and specializes in working with shy and fearful

dogs. What you don't know about Amy is that she's one of the few people on the planet that I know of

that talks even faster than I do, and that's saying something. In fact, this podcast happened almost by

accident. We were just talking late one night. Amy lives in California, so it was very late at night

for me and probably just early evening for her. And we had no real intention of recording anything,

but then all of a sudden, Amy went into what she calls, quote, explainer mode. So real quick,

I hit record, knowing that whatever she came up

with was going to be interesting. So if it sounds like we're coming in in the middle of a conversation,

that's because we are. We ended up talking about teaching humans and humans as learners

and the importance of accounting for emotions first in training and teaching for both human and canine learners.

Now, we did have a little internet connectivity problem partway through and got a little bit chopped

up, but I still think it's worth it, and the recording is worth listening to.

So, without further ado, here's Amy.

I think that trainers need to spend a decent amount of anyone, any trainer who's in the

business of coaching other people's physical skills, which we are as dog trainers.

I'm teaching you how to whatever.

We don't spend enough time, I think.

...