The Leashed Mind Podcast, Mental Health & Dog Training

Nurturing Neurodiversity & Well Being w/Karishma Warr

• The Leashed Mind by Woof Cultr© • Season 2 • Episode 11

Share episode

In Episode 11 host Mandy Boutelle engages in a profound dialogue with Karishma Warr from Calm Canine Academy. This episode, rich with personal anecdotes and shared experiences, delves into the intricacies of dog training, mental health, and personal growth. Mandy and Karishma explore the significance of positive reinforcement, empathy, and acknowledging neurodiversity in dog training, while Karishma opens up about their own journey, highlighting the impact of trauma and the essential role of supportive communities within the dog training industry.

Listeners are treated to a deep dive into the operational aspects of Karishma's business, including their commitment to prioritizing mental well-being for themselves and their staff to prevent burnout.

The conversation extends to the challenges of managing a burgeoning business that operates virtually across continents, while still focusing on mental health. This heartwarming and insightful episode promises to feel like a comforting embrace to its audience, offering a unique perspective on the parallels between dog training and human mental health.
--
Want to support Karishma?
calmcanineacademy.com
Follow their business IG- @calmcanineacademy
Follow their personal IG- @karishmawarr
Calm Canine Academy, YouTube
--
Book & podcast episode mentioned in this episode:
Pleasure Activism By Adrienne Maree Brown
The Bitey End of the Dog w/Karishma Warr
--

If you are new to The Leashed Mind Podcast, Mental Health & Dog Training then please don't forget to like, follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!
@theleashedmind on Instagram
@theleashedmind.pod on Facebook
@theleashedmind on YouTube

Support the show & help us continue making great content for listeners everywhere - cancel anytime, no commitment!
Think you might have some great advice, experience or story you'd like to share with our audience? Head on over to https://www.theleashedmind.com/ and scroll down to our guest application!

Um, Welcome back to the Leashed Mind podcast. I'm your host, Mandy Boutelle. On today's episode, I have a conversation with another one of my very dear friends, Karishma War from Calm Canine Academy. This conversation spans various topics, including challenges based in dog training, the significance of mental health in both personal life and professional practice, and the journey towards personal growth. They discuss the importance of positive reinforcement, empathy, and understanding neurodiversity in dog training. Karishma shares their personal experience. Experience emphasizing the impact of trauma and the necessity of supportive communities within the industry. They also touch upon their work in mentoring other trainers and creating an inclusive and nurturing environment for both dogs and trainers. The conversation is inter spread with personal antidotes, showcasing a deep connection and mutual respect between both Karima and I. So. I have admired Karishma for years and how they operate their business. if you listen to The Bitey End of the Dog Podcast by Mike Shikashio, there's an episode where Karishma joins Mike and Karishma really digs into how they operate their business and really strives and works very hard to prioritize the mental well being for both them and for their staff so that they're all feeling good about what they do and not, you know, trying their best as possible to help prevent and yeah, I would say prevent, not avoid, prevent burnout. just, I think when I heard that episode that Karishma was on with Mike and they really, Like, just kind of like peeled back the layers of their business and explained how they operate it in such a way I knew I had to have them on the podcast. I knew that getting Karishma's take on mental health and the dog training industry and being a business owner, being a business owner of quite a bit of staff. There are so many things that you want to pick from their brain because you're just like, how are they able to do it? Especially being a. Fairly newer business and a business that operates a lot virtually and spreads to continents. So how do they do it? How do they still really put effort into prioritizing their mental wellbeing? And I'm not going to say avoiding burnout, but really working hard to prevent and bounce back from it when it happens. So this conversation is amazing. It's so good. It feels like a hug. So let's get into it. I have Karishma War here from Calm Canine Academy. Karishma, it is about damn time I have had you on this podcast. We have been planning this and excited for a while now. So it's finally here. We've manifested it. So thank you so much for coming on. Oh my God, thank you so much for inviting me. And like I said before, I've been binging the podcast for the last few days and it's been so fun. So. If anyone hasn't watched the first, listened to the first season, go back, because it's really good. I'm curious, really quick, what have been, like, your, like, favorite episodes so far? Standout episodes. You know what? I love, I'm always, everything Mike does, I'm like, oh, the swagger. That's the most listened to one. It's the swagger. He's just got it. What is it? Like, yeah, he's aggression daddy. Isn't that what you said the other day? I've cracked me up so much when you say that. We're allowed to say that, but I will give, Jio and Taylor from Smart Bitch said that originally, and ever since I said that, I was like, yes. So if Mike is listening or watching, you're officially aggression daddy. Literally. And yeah, everything, everything that Mike does, I'm just like, Ooh, that was smooth. I'm gonna steal little nugs from that and file him away in my, uh, repertoire of cool human things that you can do. Um, that might have been the most autistic thing I've ever said. so Mike, obviously just for the cool factor, and then always Malena Mama Malena. I'm a CSAT as well, and I literally, they're like mom and dad to me. Like, I think of them like my doggy mom and dad, and uh, even if they don't really know this. They're like, ew, Krishma, we didn't discuss this, I don't care. You got a little brown baby now, guys. Reparenting at its finest. And Malena was great, I loved, I love how Malena was talking about how that she doesn't actually often take two days off in a row and like, screw that, and that's what works for her. And I was like, oh, thank god, because That made me feel so much better. I kind of like that too, yeah. Yeah. It made me feel so much better. Yeah, so, really great. Love those two. Mom and dad, basically. I love that. Those are good episodes. Yeah, if you guys haven't listened to those, go listen to those. Because I think it's very, when I had the conversations, it was very reassuring to know that people of that level of professionalism feel that way still while they're navigating this. And I'm like, oh, okay, so this is normal human shit. to feel this way. I'm not an imposter. This is normal. Like, oh, thank you. Just the human experience, just part of it and how There might never be a point where we're not worrying about these things, and that's okay. Like, it's more of like a, no, no, it's okay. No, no, Maddie, it's cool. It's cool. Lean in. It's gonna be chill. We've got this. Like, We're gonna be able to be exposed to those triggers and not have overreactions. We just need to like, it's a process, right? And we might be like, in our 50s and 60s and still like, Managing it in some way, and that's okay. And like I don't have to be like, why aren't I done yet? Like, why haven't I trained myself to be perfect, a perfect little capitalist machine and just do everything perfectly without needing much ? With, without being triggered and having an emotional, normal human response? Like, how dare you? Yeah. I love that you Oh, now I have needs, yeah. You always kind of tie it back to like dog training. And I feel like that's something like us neurodivergent folks try to do to make it more relatable and easier for us to take it in and connect the dots more of like, I do it for myself all the time. I'm like, what's my management strategy? How am I going to desensitize myself to this? Yeah, it's a script, it's a framework, right? And for me, all of the healing that I've done for myself and my mental health, and in terms of how I like, relate to the world, especially as like, a brown person and a neurodivergent person and a disabled person, we can talk about that later, but like, a large amount of that work. It was unlocked through learning about animal training and animal behavior. So it was my, I was like imprinted, you know, the little duckling that imprints, I like imprinted on dog training and I was like, Oh, this makes sense. This is the first thing I've heard that made sense. Oh, I'm sure. And that's why we're all here. Yeah. Right. That's why we're all here. And that's why it's so pivotal. And we have like a. a creepy saying at CCA, which is dog training is everything and everything is dog training. But it's so true if you really like crack your brain open and think of it that way, it is. And it's such a useful metaphor because we have been trained as dog professionals to moderate our emotional responses to be able to engage certain behaviors in response to certain antecedents. And so we can like hijack that, learning that we've already done, and by then just extrapolating it into something else, it's generalizing. We're like generalizing what we've learned about dog training and then applying it to like our mental health. society, our conceptions of gender, our conceptions of everything, blah blah blah, you know, ecology, you know, it goes on Oh, it hair splits and, yeah. It's amazing. I love it. It's so sexy. Oh, it's juicy. You're like, just want to bite it. Well, I'm curious if you've experienced this, and we can talk about like therapy and things like that, like later on. But I've noticed that in therapy for myself, I mentioned. A lot of dog training things and my therapist will be like, Oh, that's a dog training thing. I'm like trigger stacking. Oh yeah. And I'll say that all the time. And she'll be like, Oh my God. And she'll write it down and be like, I want to start using that. Like, that's totally a thing. And I remember I had to explain trigger stacking to her and she was like, Oh yeah, you're just getting overstimulated and overwhelmed. I'm like, boom. Yes. I, yes, exactly. And it's interesting just seeing all those ways that overlap. And I think it makes us. It's, I don't want to say it's easier to tap into our mental health and focus on that, but I think it really helps us have a better understanding of it. Because we have the understanding of like, you know, say a reactive dog that's having a hard time. If we can crack that open and be like, wait, I'm the reactive dog in this situation, that makes sense. 100%. Oh, 100%. I think there are like two different ways that we need to like, internalize these like At their core, these like holistic lessons, right? And one is we need to understand why the dog's performing the behavior and be able to explain that. And then we need to regulate ourselves while we guide the dog and the human through the learning process. So there's like a theoretical understanding, and then we have to actually live it. And like, be there, physically, often, if we work in person, which I did for many years. You've got to regulate your heart rate when the dog's, like, barking and lunging. You've got to learn to not be like, shut up, when the little shih tzu's yapping at you for like the 25th time that day, and you're just trying to make a website, you know, to buy the dog food. you know, you have to learn how to do all of that. And it's directly in a work. It's like, it is healing work. Healing work is integratively tied up in the process, I think, of learning how to take care of animals. And I think that's why. This topic is so important and one that's been coming up more because we're starting to develop the language now, right, like we're seeing how it compares and it's the same with me with my, I have a psychiatrist who is really interested and always asked me all these questions about dog training. I'm like, Oh my God, stop. Do you want to pay me or what? Like, I'm paying you. What are you doing? Not because they want free information by any means, they're just interested in the correlations and find it interesting to like hear. I think, and talk about it, but for me, I, part of my boundaries is that I struggle, I talk a lot, for someone who doesn't like to talk very much, I talk a lot for my work, and those words are, those words are precious to me, like, so I would definitely have had her bring things up for me, be like, ha ha ha, yes, so back to my thing, um, but there's so many overlaps, it's wild, wild. I love that, because it is true that like, And I think this is the same thing for, like, if there's just a profession that we're really interested in and we want to learn more about it and then we just, like, keep asking questions and they're like, I don't want to talk about my job anymore. But then when it comes to dog training, we forget that, like, that's really fascinating to some people that know nothing about it. And it's interesting because you're like, it's. It's behavior. It's psychology. But they're like, but it's an animal. It's different. Yeah. And that's something I enjoy actually. I enjoy seeing people's like sense of wonder and the job that we do, it's one of the things that helps bring me joy is to remember that because you're in the middle of it and it's so hard to not be bogged down by all the things that are challenging. about this job, but just remembering every now and again, I like, I'm like, oh wow, I work with pretty cool dogs, you know, like that's, that's pretty neat, get to like hang out with dogs all the time, uh, and it's a nice room to remind ourselves of that, like there's something really cool that we're all doing, like little me would be like, whoa, right, right, and I feel like that's something that a lot of us forget of like, this is something, oh, we're gonna get deep here, um, Because my therapist, she brought up to me of, and you know, this is all the inner child work, but she was like every version of you, toddler, child, teenager, mid twenties. All those pieces are still in you. And I think a lot of us forget that as we get older, like, those pieces of us are still in there and we still need to honor those pieces of us and get excited about the things that they would get excited about. Fuckin ten year old Mandy would be so stoked that she got to end up working with dogs, and then sixteen year old Mandy with peak anxiety is probably so proud of me being able to work from home full time and not have to go be social, like, I don't know. But like, we don't see that when we hit this certain adult age, we're just exhausted and grinding, and we're not like, wait a second, like, all these past versions of me would be so fucking proud of where I am now. Or they wouldn't have thought I'd get to where I am now, you know? Absolutely. And that's something that helps me with the hustle culture stuff, which is so deeply entrenched. Yeah, we're bringing out the trigger, the kind of trigger words, hustle culture, let's go. Like. I was enjoying listening to Mike's episode in season one because he was talking about his experience as an East Asian American and as a South Asian British person, grew up in London in the UK, um, well, mixed race, uh, Indian Irish, we were always brought up with this, like, just relentless drive to achieve and produce and prove your worth. And I see it. I see the function of all of that as a need for safety right within immigrant communities with families who were born elsewhere in India, Africa came over with limited. Network. What they're looking for by pushing us is to create a sense of safety. It's exactly what the dog guardians are doing when they're pushing their reactive dogs. They're trying to get them to be better, be better, be better. Come on, it's gonna be fine, but you have to do this thing. Just get to the other side. Yeah, just keep going. And yeah, for me, that's been something I've been dismantling significantly. I literally have forgotten what the question was and why I started this conversation. Because you've like moved ever so slightly. I did too! Oh my god. Everything is gone. No, no, no, it's not your fault at all. Like, you did a normal human thing. No, I totally forgot too! It's gone. It's gone now. So there was a small environmental shift and we are just completely incapable of moving forward and that's fine. Oh, I saw it in your eyes. You did this like scan and I was like, fuck. Krishma just lost their train of thought. Fuck. Krishma's gone. We lost them. Oh, this is the most neurodivergent episode ever. Cause I, the second I got up, I was like. What did I ask them? Why am I here? Who am I? Who are you? What is this? Why are all these lights on me? We were generally talking about, like, this idea of hustle culture, I think, was where we were starting. This idea that I have to do too much, too much, too much. That's something that I've been really working to move away from recently. Mike was telling me about. how he was doing something similar in, well, he was telling you in the podcast. I was like, was he talking to you? I was like, Mike was talking to me, uh, about this thing, and he was saying similar things about how, like, that's something he had to really dismantle and it's, that's been the biggest thing, I think, over the last, like, Year for me. It's been that, that journey for me of like starting to kind of work less and be okay with working less and not feel like I'm doing something wrong by working less. It's a hard one. I feel like you struggle with that too. Is it noticeable? Is it that noticeable? Oops. Um, I'm glad you said that because, wait, is it noticeable though? Absolutely not, Mandy. Not even slightly. Nobody knows. We're all here. We have no idea why we're here, even, in listening to you talk about this. It's not noticeable in a bad way. Not in a, not in a bad way. In a way that I, like how you notice my eyes flicker, right? I don't think that's a bad thing. That's just like a fact of me. Like sometimes if there's an environmental, piece of environmental change and I'm under pressure, I might just lose my train of thought and that's fine. It's not bad or good, right? Like, maybe it is noticeable for you, but that's also fine. Like, it's not a bad thing. First of all, there's no pressure. We are friends just talking about mental health, first of all. I know. But, no, I fucking struggle with it big time. Um, my value is always in my worth, and that's never something that like, the irony in that is growing up, you know, I, ironically enough, most of my family is brown. I am the only white redhead in my entire family. I am the redheaded stepchild. I came out looking exactly like my grandpa and my dad. No traits of like, I need to find a family photo because like there's a photo of like little tiny Mandy red pale skin and like everyone else is brown dark hair because my family is primarily Filipino. So. I was always told, Oh, you're so pretty. Oh, you're so gorgeous. So all my value was put into my looks and that was my self worth. And then it somehow transitioned into all my value was in my, because I wanted to prove that I was more than a pretty face. And so I, which is hi fucking society being a woman. And then I was like, okay, well, I'm going to work hard, have a fucking business and show you that I'm more than that. And more than being a stupid superficial hairstylist, because no one took me seriously when I did that, and then it was, oh no, now all my value is in my work. And if I'm not productive, I am not, I'm just a dead fish floating to the surface. And I told my therapist, because I have PMDD, I have two horrible weeks every month where I, everything is awful, what's the point of going on, I have no value, and I'm working through that, but I told her yesterday, I had a therapy session and I was like, I'm ahead of all my work, I am like two, three weeks ahead of everything, I have the time to give myself. Gave myself that day of like, sit with your feelings, be sad, eat junk food, watch your shows, do your thing. My husband's like, yes, do that, you need that. I do that. I sit on the couch, scroll on my phone, and then I'm still kind of just like, I should be working. I took a day off of work that I should have had. I wasn't productive, therefore I suck. And of course the logical brain inside is going, okay, you're ahead of schedule. You're ahead of all your client work. You have the flexibility. So why are you doing this to yourself? And it's like, if I'm not productive, I suck. And I think all of us, we have some type of, you know, can't think of the word, internal thing telling us that our worth is not there. We're not valuable if we're resting, if we're not taking time for ourselves. And so I'm curious, like, where you have kind of been in that journey and that spectrum and how you've kind of learned to communicate with yourself in a way of like, oh, hey, like how you would talk to yourself is because I think a lot of the times, hi, I'm rambling. Um, a lot of the times we talk to ourselves. It's not how we would talk to a friend, or a spouse, or a partner. We are, like, I am so mean to myself. Yes! Or to our dogs. Yes. but, like, if I were to talk like that to a friend, they'd probably slap me across the face. Really. 100%. And if I heard anyone talk to anyone I knew like that, I'd be like, what a toxic person. Right! It's something that I've been working on. Myself as well. It's really funny that you make this, this, this like trajectory that you have of someone socialized as a woman, growing up, being told that your worth is important, similarly to me, fairest skinned of all of my family, including my brother, who's, I'm just much fairer and in lots of cultures, that's really something that you're, you're gassed up about that a lot, you know, it's made your identity, right? People like that often. And it's Like they said, you know, you're so beautiful, you're so beautiful, you put so much of your worth in that. I had a similar trajectory. It was very much about looks and then it became about my business. Yeah. Appearance and then this kind of like change to, to the business, both of which very societally endorsed things to be dysfunctional around. And I was just being reinforced all over the place for this and that, that was the trap. And it's all that external validation. Yeah, and at its core, it's like capitalist, it's colonial, it's patriarchal, it's racist. It's all of those things that we hopefully are trying to move away from within ourselves and then within our like societies and our relationships, but it's hard. So my, my recent, have you heard of, have you read Pleasure Activism? No. I've got a book in here. Ooh, Mandy, I'm gonna message this to you. Yes. Pleasure Activism is a book all about pleasure and enjoyment and In, I don't have the, I can't find the name of the author, um, it's all about how we can use our own pleasure as, like, a radical political tool, like a social tool, like, what is, what is it at the root of, like, consistently working and being obsessed with productivity? It's an inability to enjoy oneself. It's like the dog that's ball obsessed or obsessed with chasing the birds in the yard or unable to just settle down. You can't just air sense. And stand there and like enjoy being alive. Like you can't just like enjoy the sun, you know these are things that I would never have given myself permission to enjoy before like I don't have time to lay down on the Grass outside and I was just gonna say time like we gotta go. We got a zombie. Yeah, there's no scarcity mindset But what that's just it's just it's just capitalist propaganda Honestly, like that's how I see it that helps me detach from it because I've done a lot of work to like move away from That thinking politically so it makes sense to kind of trickle down into the way that I navigate my day to day life. And I don't always listen to myself anymore. When my body says, Oh, you should work for 12 hours, Krishma. Yeah, you should remake that whole website and make it just a little bit better, but probably the exact same as before. I now, let's look at that in impulse, the same way that I look at my dog's impulse to rush up at a new stranger, and get way too close and then freak out. I'm like, haha, lol, as if. You do not know how to take care of yourself, little puppy. And I'll have to like. Literally redirected myself. So it's part of this thing. I acknowledge that I have been conditioned by all of these. Systems, and that's not working in my favor, and I also don't believe that's who I am. Am I out the other side where I can like wake up and be productive, but also enjoy moments of rest presently, fluently, and switch between those two? Hell fucking no, absolutely not. I'm like stage one mat relaxation, you know. The mat's coming down, I'm laying down, you know, I'm really at the beginning. But it's a skill, right, that you learn. I'm hoping that I'll learn that. That's like my, My 30s, I think that's what I'm going to do, but read Pleasure Activism because it's all about this idea that like the disenfranchised, the folks who live in the margins have been denied pleasure. Right. Right. By society. We don't deserve it. We have to earn it in some way. And it's this dismantling of this concept and then like framing it in a way that makes a lot of sense to me. Like, Oh, of course, we feel the need to overachieve. It's because we've been mocked for losing our train of thought when we're in a classroom and 500 things are happening, right? It's not our fault, but of course we had that learning experience and that's gonna inform our future behavior, right? I panicked a little bit when I lost my train of thought just then, like I had a little internal moment. I know, it's, it's, I look at it like a puppy, you know, it's like, oh the puppy got a bit upset because they couldn't get the keys. Oh, sweet puppy. Are you okay? Yes, you're fine. Off you go, right? Like, that's how I handle yourself though, it is. It helps, it helps. Because I've already done it with the puppies and they're all cute and looking at me with their little eyes and it makes it easier for me to not be a jerk, right? So I try to hijack that and I go like, okay, so, you know, I lost my train of thought, I was like, the internal voice starts, you know, Oh my god, this is going to be awful, you're not going to make it back, you're going to have a panic attack, you're going to be awful, and then I just go, Go like, oh, look, that's happening. How silly. Um, isn't that a bit of a silly puppy, what you're doing over there? And then like five minutes later, I'm fine. Like, I don't care anymore. But before, I wouldn't have been able to do that. Like many puppy parents, I would feel that and then go, oh my God, my puppy's broken. I'm the worst dog parent. I'm gonna message my dog 5,000 times. Yes. And then gonna yell at the puppy. I'm gonna go down a rabbit hole of using punishment because I'm so uncomfortable with what the puppy's doing. You know, it's like grasping, grasping. Anyway, but it's this like, you can't stop. Doing stuff just sit with it. It's fine. It's okay. Oh sitting with it's hard Sitting with it. It's so hard. It's so hard because it's uncomfortable. You don't want to feel it You don't want to acknowledge where it is where you're at and that you fucked up, but you're human. even that you fucked up It's just that there was a series of antecedents that took place many of which were outside of your control and then the thing happened Like, I wouldn't even say you fucked up. It's just like, oh, an event took place. Like, there wouldn't be a tornado and you would be like, mother nature fucked up. You'd be like, oh, there was a tornado. It was a barometric event that took place because of all these other things that happened before. I really try to think of it like that. And it, it helps me not blame myself, which then unlocks. the ability to change behavior because you're no longer just like weighed down by shame. right. Oh, you are cracking so many things open right now. No, it's so good. I think so many people are just gonna be like, oh, fuck. Yeah, But I don't want to make them get the impression that I like. I've got this down. Like, I certainly have not got this down. In fact, the last three months have been the most chaotic and, like, up and down of my of starting my career. Like, well, not starting my career, that's not a lie. I really excelled in the chaos at the beginning. in the last three years of, right, of CCA, of working at Calm Canine Academy, the last three, four months have been the most chaotic. And it's because of a combination of vast growth. financial, um, you know, we're in a recession. everyone's feeling it hit a little bit hard and then, you know, Jux put that in with mental health stuff and you've got, you've got a tough few months when you have such a big crew. I have like a big team now and it's a lot of responsibility. I crashed hard, I burnt out, I was crispy, like, just three months ago. So I'm not sitting here being like, I've got it. Like, I'm like, I think I kind of see what's going on. But really, I'm still not, I haven't quite got it yet. But does that sound right? Like, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you're, we're on the same fucking wavelength. Because I was so burnt out by like, my jaw is like, tensing up, like, April? I was so burnt out for, like, a good, like, yeah, massage your own jaw. I know, I'm like, I'm feeling yours now, so I'm, like, I'm getting in there. yeah, like, April to May, I was so burnt out because it was just, like, I'm, my mom used to call me a future tripper. So, like, I just, I think ten steps ahead and I panic of all the steps in between of all these things I need to accomplish. They're not big, huge things, but me looking at the big picture, I get overwhelmed and go, oh, I don't need to do it, right? Like, um, and so that hit me and I just hit a fucking wall because I didn't take care of myself. I was go, go, go, go, go, crashed and burned. And then I was like, oh. Saw the path that got here, followed it, churned it out on that, so how do I re evaluate, and I think so many of us, you know, you included, we hit that wall, and then we think, Fuck, I'm a piece of shit. I got here. I'm burnt out. How am I gonna keep this going? I shouldn't get burnt out. Successful people don't get burnt out. I say that so many air quotes around that. Because successful do people do get burnt out because we work we love what we do and I don't think Who did I talk to about this? Sarah's strumming. We had a conversation like a month or so ago and You know, she was like, people, like, you, you get, oh, I took my medication, I swear, the brain, it's just, the hamster is very slow. You're crushing it, let the hamster do its thing. It'll come, it'll come, there's no rush. It's just me. Thank you, I love you. I love you too. She was saying that, You know, a lot of us get told like we can't work or that, like, it's a bad thing that we work so much or we shouldn't like working that much. I said this to my husband cause he loves working too and working. eases his anxiety, and he feels accomplished. And it's like, for those of us that love what we do, and love working, like, there is nothing wrong with loving that, but I think we need to take care of ourselves in the process so that we can continue loving it. And I think that goes to the whole hustle culture thing of just, like, you're working too hard, you're doing too much, you're burning yourself out, and it's like, okay, we'll But it's gratifying for us to expand and grow our business and help people. That's why we do this. And I think it's just like learning to take better care of ourselves and that comes with time and networking and finding our people. So on that note, I want to know how you feel about that and how you've worked to kind of accumulate your people in order to really make that work for you. It's a double edged question. Yeah, this is the biggest. thing that I was thinking about before coming on here. I was like, what is it that's got me able to recover from that burnout that I experienced a few months ago? So much faster than I would have done three years ago, and it was, it was one of the worst burnouts of my professional career But that was because it was the first time I'd ever burnt out in community So I've always been a very private shameful thing. I'm burning out. No one look at me I don't exist and then I come back and I'm perfect and I'm shiny and hello. Everything is great But this time I have a team of like 15 people who I'm Meant to be like taken care of that's how I think of it I meant to be taking care of the people who are working in my business and making sure that they have what they need And there was a few months where I had to be like I cannot do that. I was like, sorry guys I'm literally unable to deliver on some of the things that I said I was going to be able to do. This is why. Transparency. And the reason it was so hard for me was because I then immediately went into, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this is, this is the worst thing ever. But they all came through and when, Yeah, of course you're burning out. No worries. Here, we'll do this. I'll take this on. I'll do this. And I was like, holy shit. And that was, like, the most empowering experience, I think, for me, because I realized that I've done it for them in the past without even really thinking. Right, you said that a ton. But when it comes, when it comes to me, I just assumed that it, that would never happen, because that's never been how I've been treated before by communities that I was a part of. Any sort of failure is perceived as, like, a moral failure. Like, you are bad rather than the antecedent arrangements were incorrect, or there's a need not being met, right? And to this topic of drive and work, like, there's nothing wrong with being driven by your work, and often that is a result that your work creates community for you. Right? When you're, as neurodivergent people, we might not get along. I listen, okay, I'm autistic, I have ADHD, I have a physical disability, I'm half Indian, half Irish. I don't get along with my neighbours, you know? There's a unique intersection of experiences you need to have to like, get along with me in many cases, and for me to get along with you. We're very similar in many ways. Many people in this industry are, right? We find our people. So of course we're driven. To like, be a part of that community. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. Just like there's nothing wrong with like, a dog that's super driven to hunt, cooperatively with a human being, right? Can that become maladaptive and unhealthy if we don't create balance? I think yes in both animals, right? So, my dog Heera, very driven to hunt corporatively. Me, very driven to hunt corporatively. But with work, I'm hunting, I'm bringing in reinforcement, my money, the control over my environment. I get to control my weekly routine. We're doing the same thing. We're out there controlling our environment and negotiating different outcomes. Heera can become obsessively Like, hunty, to the point that he injures himself. Oh, buddy. I can become obsessively hurt worky to the point that I injure myself. I can work for two weeks without taking a break, you know, and get the flu. Because I just haven't been sleeping enough, right? Yep, run yourself into the ground. It's the same thing, right? He's a little anxious poodle, who has had learning experiences that cause him to potentially be unbalanced in the way that he seeks out reinforcement, and it's the same for me. And I always say that Heera's autistic. Like, I, I fully, I just, it can't, he can't not, maybe he is, I don't know how it works, I haven't done enough about neurobiology, but like, it really seems like he is, and I feel like especially for us neurodivergent people, like. That community is so important, that drive is so part of that community, and then creating balance is how you can work without it becoming maladaptive. And it's the same with the fetch conversation, right? You can still play fetch, just like take some breaks, right? You can still work, just like take some breaks. It's much harder than that, obviously. I was just gonna say, it's so much harder than that. I think it just takes a break. But it's, you know, setting up our environment in a way like I, I have developed this role with myself, accomplish a task, go take five, 10 minute break. I don't just walk out of my office for five to 10 minutes. And. It helps, it changes my mental state, it changes my mood, I'm not obsessing, I'm not getting in that hyper focused state that will burn me out. But it's a learned skill. We're training ourselves and it takes fucking time, but setting up the environment in a way. that works best for us, finding what works, what doesn't work, I have learned and I can't have music when I am typing. brown noise, is very helpful when I have to type, because I just need to, like, shrruugh, like shut my fucking brain up. So I can look at words and type them. If I am listening to music with lyrics, I'll start typing and I'll lose my train of thought. It's too overstimulating for me. I am obsessed with that. Those antecedent arrangements, it's so important. And that there's nothing wrong for needing those antecedent arrangements to be adjusted. This is something that we did, uh, we did like the webinar, um, the other day on managing reactivity and I was Trying to frame management as an access need. Ooh, explain that. So we have a dog who is in pain because they have arthritis and they're two years old. And so they're really sound sensitive as a result of that. And what they require in order to sleep enough to be healthy is white noise. plus the radio and they need to be, have the door closed so that they can't be right by the front door, bothering, being triggered by every single noise. Some people look at that and go, oh, that's so annoying. When will I be able to stop doing that for my dog? Some people look at people who want wheelchair access and ramps onto buildings in the same way. They're like, oh, this is such an inconvenience. When can it stop? stop being my problem. It's not going to stop being your problem, potentially, right? Like, it might continue being your problem. And that's just like part of being a living creature. And that's actually a good thing. Lean into it because it'll make you happier if you actually start thinking this way. but I don't know. That's what I think about when I think about you sitting down and putting that white noise on. Like, I've definitely been told I was wrong for needing the accommodations that I needed, right? Whether that be brown noise or for me, I work a hundred percent virtually. From home and old me would never have let me do that because that accommodation would have been considered Unacceptable. When will you get back to being the better version, the more normal version, you know? You can just sit in the, in the accommodation and go, I need this, and this is what I need, and I'm proud of it. And like, that's cool, I think. Like, I love that. To like, celebrate those accommodations almost, as like, look at this cool thing I've found. I've unlocked this new thing. Like, a reframe there can be really cool, I think. For me, it's been helpful. Well, and I think, like, for a lot of us growing up, Undiagnosed, neurodivergent, and then getting diagnosed later in life. Um, A lot of us didn't realize, and you and I had this conversation before we hit record, that, like, growing up, we have that realization afterwards of like, Oh, oh shit, wait, that was me stimming. That was me trying to find a way to, like, get myself to focus on my own, not knowing what I needed in that moment. And then being criticized, called out by a teacher for being, you know, not paying attention, being inattentive. And it's like, oh. That was my brain just trying its very best with the tools it had in the moment. I can go back. This is how traumatic my advanced English teacher was my freshman year. Still remember. Still fucking hate her. Don't remember her name. That's how insignificant she was. But I remember I would write notes in class. I was a very big note writer. My best friends, they'll all be like, you wrote the best notes. And I'm like, that's all, it's cause I needed to focus. I'd write, like, I'd make them all extravagant, I'd put parentheses, I'd make the text all big, I'd make it engaging, it'd be like a story, that's how my notes were. And I would do that to focus so I could take in what the teacher was teaching. But of course, writing notes in class, you're not paying attention, and it's like, well, okay, then you're gonna take away the boy's fidget spinner when he's doing that to try and focus, but me writing notes That's bad because I'm still focusing. I still have good grades in your class. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? And then, you know, it's taking the note from me and reading it. Like, just shaming me. And then it's, you know, being told I'm air headed and not paying attention. And I realize now all those, like, stupid teenagers telling me that I was air headed and am I a natural blonde? And it's like, no, like, my environment was too much for me. Y'all make it like, there's only one way to learn and one way to use my brain, and yeah, we could go on that whole thing. It just, it sucks when you look back at that and now you have the tools that you need. You find what you need and you're like, oh wait, this is This is that coming back. And now I have a way to actually fix that. And it's like, well, fuck, I wish I had that back then. But, even if we didn't have that then, having it now, setting us up now, 10 year old Mandy is going to be grateful for that. 15 year old Mandy is going to be grateful for that. For finally being understood in that way. And I think it just takes time figuring out what works. I am literally sitting here with my fidget spinner so that I can stay on track. yeah, I'm just like happily swaying away and I'm not going to stop because it's keeping me focused. I'm going to do it. It's helpful. It's helpful. And what it will do is actually, I'm going to take a step back for a second zoning in on the shame part of this because I think that that is like Even saying that word, like, shame, like, my voice cracks. They're like, should you say perfect shame? Like, that shame piece is, like, so visceral for me. I have a similar memory from school. It's so funny how these things stick with you. I have a memory of reading, it was like story time, and I don't know how old I was, but, I was having, like, a really big emotional response to the story. Like, it was sad or something like that. I was having feelings in my body, and I stood up, and I started moving, like, intuitively. You had to get it out. I needed to, like, I was like, oh, I gotta move. And I was literally unaware that I did it, and then called out and, like, mocked by the teacher, and then kind of subsequently mocked by classmates, and then immediately I just felt this, like, You're the weirdo. Why couldn't you just sit still? And a change on my, like, physiology takes place, because What are the ABCs of that scenario? I learned that when I have an uncomfortable feeling, what I should have learned is when I have an uncomfortable feeling, you do the somatic movements, whatever comes naturally to you to process it. You had the healthy response, yeah! I had a super healthy response, and then the consequences is that you will have metabolized that feeling, that experience, and come out the other side without it. Bothering you anymore. You are over it. You shook it off, right? What I actually learned is that when I feel a need that I have, I should suppress that and I should hold it in. You learned and I should trust yourself. Yeah, and I learned to actively ignore, it was punished. The behavior of listening to my body was punished. Flash forward 20 years, in my mid twenties, I'm having full blown physical and mental breakdowns because I had been suppressing my needs, my, like, basic needs for movement, and you'll see me doing it, like, when we're talking, I might shake, I might chew my lip, I might, like, raise my hands up like this, like, I let it all hang out now, because I'm so much better like this, you want me like this, like, you don't want me like that. Right, you don't want me reactive and snapping. Yeah, and Also, like, my job has been pretty big. Sorry, that was how I handled the pigs. No, that was how you handled things. I have handled it that way too. I've been the reactive dog, the lunchy barky dog. I've been the shut down, freezing, frozen dog. Right. I've been the fawning dog. being a clown and goofing around and mouthing on people. I've done it all. Like, I get it. but for me, the big part that, like, really unlocked things was, like, no shame. Like, there's no more shame for me around doing these things. And I have a partner who, um, is also neurodivergent, and they're just kind of coming out on their journey, and they tick or stim sometimes, and I make a point of celebrating it. Like I said, good breath to you at the beginning of this recording. You took a deep breath at the beginning, and I was like, good breath Mandy, like, celebrate it. Sometimes I'm like, trying to take a deep breath quietly so no one looks at me. Fuck that. I'm gonna take the loudest, biggest, deep breath. I'm gonna stick my tits out. Like, this is a big deal. These are skills, hard earned skills, right? Like, so when I'm jiggling and you're fidgeting and doing stuff like that, I think of it as like, honor it. Yeah, like, it's big it up. Like, gas up your friends, you know? It's like when you go to like, Queer events, and everyone's just like, so on point and just really just gassing each other up. The whole point of being there is to be like, I love that you are so freaking queer, right? Like, I want to, I want to do that for my neurodivergent friends. Like, when they have to put brand noise on, I'm like, what a fucking awesome thing. Yes, you're a rock star. Crush it. Yeah. Like, I want that attitude towards that stuff. I don't know. No, it's been so reinforcing, like, when I told you, like, all my neurodivergent, like, management tools, you're like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, that is good. Thank you. I need that. How starved are we of that? How starved are we? Sometimes we don't even know how to take it sometimes. Like, sometimes when I do this to my friends when they're first, like, if I'm first meeting someone who's neurodivergent and I'm, like, really pointing out all of their things and going like, I love that about you. That's so cool. I see people going like, whoa. Krishma, we don't talk about these things. And I'm like, oh, come on. Yeah, don't you point that out. It's because if we shine a light on it, that's how we can observe it and see it and realise that it's not that scary. I try to do like a process of women's desensitisation and counter conditioning, where I'm like, notice you did this thing. That was awesome. Here's a cookie. Love that thing. Safe to do that here. Keep doing that thing, please. And it's cool to see how people change. When you let that happen. Well, and you let them feel safe around you, you become that safe person. And I think a lot of us need that because a lot of us didn't grow up with that. like my husband, I didn't notice for the longest time. He would just go and I'm like, And I'm, I, for, I'd get annoyed when he would do that, and then I'm like, wait, he's releasing, he's stimming, he's, and I'm like, oh, fuck, I need to celebrate that, I need to not snap at him when he does that, because he needs that. And when I finally had that realization, I'm like, oh, oh, and then you just think of like the big picture of everyone else and how they handle that stuff, and I'm like, okay, I like, keep your biases to yourself unless you're going to encourage someone, like. There's no need to minimize when they are trying to regulate themselves. I think that's the coolest thing ever. People regulating themselves is like a radical act, right? Yes! It's the, it's the best thing you can do for your community. You want to solve all the problems, regulate your nervous, everyone should just regulate their nervous systems more. And if you model that to people, other people start to do it too. We are such social learners. I wish that, like, our culture had frameworks in place for this stuff more so than it does around a bunch of men kicking a football around a field, you know, like, I wish that we had cultural frameworks and, you know, in lots of indigenous cultures do. Not gonna lie, it's just white people that don't. Like, lots of indigenous cultures have those frameworks for regulation, co regulation. I spent the morning doing my partner's hair this morning and it's just like a very Wonderful thing to do and I would never have let myself do that five years in no time, you know I don't have time for that. I've got to spend the whole day worrying about this podcast interview. That's much more important That's what I would that would that would be me five years ago, but I don't know. I just I love, I love celebrating that stuff and I love to create environments where it's celebrated and that's part of that community thing, right? We celebrate the dogs and all of their neurodivergence. They want to stand there and sniff for five minutes after seeing a fox. Go nuts. Do your thing, bro. And sometimes I'm going to need to go and watch like a whole season of Desperate Housewives and, uh, lay on a heated blanket in the dark. And that's also fine. Like, what is it you need? Like, we got this. Because if you let animals do that, they turn up. better versions of themselves, right? And that's We need our own enrichment. It solves problems. Literally. Well, literally, it's Well, yeah, exactly. The enrichment framework really works in this context because it's like looking at all the different needs that you might have. It's the same for people. But that's how it is. Like, apply it to the dogs. Practice with the dogs. And practice with yourself. But we never make it back to ourselves. We're like, no. We never make it back to ourselves. We're not the dog. I didn't for a long time. How did this happen with me? Yeah. I was just going to ask, like, yeah, I'm trying to think of a story. I'm like, how did this work? Was it 2020? Cause I feel like all of us kind of like were face to face with it in 2020 of like, Oh, these tools don't work anymore. Yes. I feel like it's been, it's been like an up and down thing. Right. I think for me, when I started, I think it was a starting point, a significant point in this journey for me is definitely when I started working with dogs. So mid twenties. 24, 23, you know, at my lowest point in my mental health when I was really struggling. I couldn't work properly because I was, I have a physical disability called EDS, which means that too much movement can sometimes cause me pain and I was physically laboring. So anyway, not feeling great about that, came into dogs and started to learn, not really expecting that to be much there. I was like, I love dogs. It's going to be great. We're going to have the best time. As I started learning, it was it was nothing I'd ever heard of before, like, not punishing animals as like the core of a philosophy. Like, I, I sort of started working in a very R plus training place and I was learning all of this stuff and going like, wow, I've literally never heard this in my life. I've heard that when someone does something wrong, you should tell them that they're wrong and then move on. It took years for me to apply that to people, to be perfectly honest. And. I'm still finding ways to deepen the way I apply to it with people and myself. But for me, it happened out of necessity, honestly, to be perfectly frank. Like, I think I would be dead if I hadn't learned these skills, like, to be perfectly frank. Like, that's where I would have, that's where I was going. Like, it, it, I, I caught us, I was falling and I caught myself at the end and it was a large part was the being around the animals and then learning how to interact with them empathetically that gave me the tools to lift myself out and then it was seven years of rewriting over and over again every six months wiping the slate clean and writing it out all over again and it's it's like you said like everything is dog training and dog training is everything we we're constantly having to just re Configure how we conceive of, like, ourselves, my training, I was working in person, now I'm working virtually, I used to teach dogs to sit and now I don't, I used to play fetch and now I don't, I used to drink and now I don't, like, you learn, you learn and you get better and I think of it like It's just a skill of behavior change, right? Like, it's, I always joke that I pray to the gods of behavior change. Like, if I were to have a religion, that would be my religion. Like, the framework through which I see the world is behavior. Like, it makes sense to me, because I'm a human, so obviously it's gonna make sense to me. but it happened out of necessity, because if I hadn't have started to gain those skills. I was desperately searching for those skills. That's what I'm trying to say here. Oh yeah, yeah, were you grasping like something, something, click it into place. I need something to make sense, yeah. We were talking before about therapists and it's a funny parallel because At the point where I was about, I started looking and finding training and behavior, I was at the end of working with like a year for, a year and a half in therapy twice, twice a week, for these challenges that I was having, and my anxiety, and like that kind of stuff. And it made me worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse. For me, that particular therapy with that particular therapist was not good, just like for many dog guardians. Training sessions for particular trainers might make things worse, right? That doesn't mean that all therapists are terrible. It just means that it's a very complicated profession, working in behavior, and sometimes it's going to work and sometimes it's not. Um, so I was at my lowest and I was ready. I was like, anything. I was like, this, the fancy white man in the coat didn't fix me. Now what? Now what am I going to do? Um, and it just, it worked, to be perfectly honest, right? Like, I started to shift my conception of things from a very punishment. I was mean to myself and I was mean to everyone around me and I hated everyone. I was like the classic undiagnosed autistic ADHD. I was in pain, physical pain, so I was grumpy as fuck. and I just endured a lot of trauma. A dog that's in pain. I mean, the parallels. No one's missing the parallels, Mandy, come on. I just had to break it down. Just have to say, my son's a little like dog training, Krishna. I was in pain. I had a, I had a negativity bias around everything in the world. I would, I would joke to people that like, I would see a kid and I, it's not a funny joke, actually. I shouldn't joke about it, but I'd see a kid and I'd be like, bet that kid's gonna have a shit load of stuff. But that's like a dog looking at a person and going, bet that person's dangerous. Right, it's a negativity bias because of learned experiences, genetics, the environment, all these other things. And then Fuck, are we the same person? Mandy for real though, because we're Scorpios too. And my big breakdown happened in April as well. There's something going on. we all have to chat about this. Are you a November Scorpio or an October Scorpio? You're October, right? I'm October, so I'm more emotional. I'm a Pisces moon as well. I'm a Pisces moon as well. Fuck off. Fuck off. Yeah, because we're like, scary, but actually just sort of babes. Big baby softy, yes. We put on a big mask. Hysterical. I love that. Oh my god, we're gonna have to break that down more. Yeah, we'll just go for a drink and chat about that. Like a full 48 hours, probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A Scorpio date. We'll do it. But, but you touched on the, like, being mean. And, like, that is something Okay, so this is gonna be funny. So, and I bet you have a story to relate to this. the principal called my mom when I was in elementary school because kids were, uh, complaining that I was giving them mean stares. Because I was the kid that would just Glare in class and be angry and I'm like poor little baby didn't know how to regulate her Emotions and felt so many things that she would freeze up and just glare at people like get away from me Don't interact with me shut down and they were like what's wrong with Amanda that she's like glaring at everyone and doesn't want friends and it's like Nothing's wrong with Amanda! There's something wrong with the environment. The antecedent arrangements were incorrect, and then they blame you. Yep. And that's And I was bullied, so I'm like, how am I the mean person? But then you blame yourself as well, right, then? You internalize that and then you start blaming yourself. It's like, they colonize, it's like an internal colonization. If I wasn't so weird, if I wasn't so bleh. If you weren't so different, if you weren't so outside of the norm, if you didn't have these needs, etc, etc.. And how all this stemmed from necessity and Yeah. Some people don't believe me when I say that I was to be really mean and like, like a Debbie Downer, like I was like a dark cloud. I kind of, I felt like that, like, uh, compared to now I did not have any of the communication skills that I do now. I didn't have any of the emotional. intelligence skills that I do now. I was a very, very different person. And just like the dogs, I was tough. I was puckered muzzle, you know, like, you know, and agonistic, you know, ready to go. Like, just feel all tight. Like, felt unsafe, like, all the time. Unsafe in my body, and it fueled behaviors that then made me more unsafe. It was this panic, right, that we see happening all the time with many animals. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm curious. Well, yes, I do. Um, I do want to jump in. I just don't want to interrupt your train of thought. Please, go, go, go. I'm good. Um, I'm curious when you, like, notice that in yourself and notice the, like, snarkiness, the meanness. Because I noticed this with myself, I'd be like, No, no, no, don't, don't, don't do that. But then it's like, I can't help it because that was just the reaction I had. I just would pop off. And then afterwards, I'd be like, Why did I fucking react that way? That's not helpful. That's not gonna make them like me anymore. You and I actually had an interaction in like 2020. Do you remember it? Was that about the BLM stuff? Mm hmm. I was so triggered in that moment, man. I know you were, I was so pissed off. I know. You were, were and I felt defensive on the streets. No, no, me too. Well, that interaction wasn't even us talking like, no, it was like. Like, little avatars from like however many years ago. I'd literally completely forgotten about that. I was so, so, context for this conversation was post George Floyd, I was in New York. Yeah, for everyone listening, yeah. Yeah, for context, yeah. Post George Floyd, but everyone was in, I was literally, it was June, yeah. Like, 2020, it was in the heat of it. Oh god, yeah, I was so, like, scared at the time, because I was in America. I was actually undocumented at the time. Got some juicy gossip for you. Got some juice. Juice. Uh, I don't care. Uh, whatever. Um, But that's a scary time, yeah. It was a super scary time, and I was just popping off at anyone. That was a time when I was much more like that. Actually, it's a great example. I would never behave like that. Ever in a minute. Basically what happened is I reached out. Mandy just suddenly pissed me off and I was like, Oh, you pissed me off, Mandy. And Mandy was like, Oh, you pissed me off now. It was a classic internet interaction. It wasn't actually that bad. It wasn't that bad, but I totally Now that we're ahead of that, I've been wanting to talk to you about this because I have always felt like I didn't even remember it happened. Hold on to everything. I'm a fucking elephant. Like, I remember everything, good, bad. But it's because I, I hate how I reacted in that moment. Because I felt that I had no right to react the way I did in that moment. And I had wished in that moment that I would have contacted you and handled it, but I don't think you were in the place to hear it either. Like, it was so clear from what, and it's cool that we're having this conversation now. Yeah. And we're so like, Like, we love each other. We're friends now. And, three years ago, I wouldn't have pictured that happening. I thought you fucking hated my guts. And I think you had a right to, with how that interaction went. And, for the last, like, two years, I thought you hated me. Because of that interaction. As well, yeah. I mean, I would probably think that too. If I were on the receiving end of my spice. Uh, I would have been like, ooh. I was just as spicy! We're both spicy, but that's because we're the same person, Mandy. Uh, and Um I feel, I look back at that and I laugh at myself, like I laugh at the little puppy in me. I was like, why I didn't laugh actually, because that little puppy was quite upset. I don't laugh at that. I was like, And that puppy had a right to be upset. Yes. Yeah, it was a really shit time. It was COVID. It was like, just a really, really dark. We were trigger stacked. Everyone, I think, everyone was so trigger stacked. That lack of safety was so imminent and real. And, like you mentioned earlier, you were like, when you react in a way, if you do react snarky like that, you then go, oh no, why did I do that? Blah blah blah. That shame thing again, like. I take a lot of accountability for my behaviors, if I ever behave in a way that I don't like. I like to be very honest about it and be like, I did not like that. Like, we're doing that, right? We're like, we didn't like that. That wasn't great. But I try not to, and this is learned through many, many years of reframing. I try not to then go. You made a mistake and therefore you're bad. Or you made a mistake and that was wrong. That was wrong. Because it wasn't wrong. What we both did was exactly the best that we could do at that time. Yes. Right? And it's the tools we had. We felt big feelings. We didn't know how to get them out the right healthy way. Yeah, I've read Crucial Conversations, like, five times since then. Like, if you haven't read that book, we definitely should. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Crucial Conversations. No, it's good. I'm gonna list all these. Crucial Conversations gave me so many skills to navigate those social media conversations, which now, to me, we were talking about this earlier before we started recording. Now, to me, when I see things on social media, I giggle. I have a very, even the horrible stuff, even when I see really nasty stuff, I'm just like, uh, not thinking about it. Silly people being silly. Like, um, I don't care in the way that I used to. I used to care so much by, about everything that I saw that Used to upset me. I couldn't handle that trigger. It was a big feeling for me. you mentioned earlier as well like what is it one of the things that like helped shift that to be perfectly honest I am one of those cases Where training is not enough. I needed meds. Yeah. Yeah. Hi. Hello. I needed meds. Yeah Yeah, but it's a great example I spent I'm a high achiever and I really put my mind to things when I And I focused on my mental health for two years, two to three years. I was fully focused on it in my early twenties. And it got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse with all the standard treatments that were being provided to me by the NHS at the time. And that's because I have a very rare chronic disease. I am autistic. I am brown. These things all change the care and the treatment, but they didn't know that. Right. Did you lose your train of thought? I lost my train of thought. Help me when I'm talking about healing. Yeah, so I had to take meds, basically. Yeah, so I had to take meds because I tried really hard with all of those traditional therapies. I went to multiple different therapists, just like people go to multiple different trainers. It didn't work. It got worse, and then I remember starting SSRIs. And there was like a shift one day, a few months in, where I like looked at a tree and I was like, I just remember literally this moment in the park, literally right there, and I looked at this tree and I was like, oh, that's such a beautiful tree. And then I was like, whoa, what was that? You never like were able to like take that a positivity bias? Yeah. I was pretty deeply depressed the majority of my like adolescence and childhood just as a result of like, you know, growing up in a kind of, family that I did and the environments that I did. Learn how to survive in that environment you're in and then you got through it. I shut down. I love that version of me. Like I don't feel like I made the wrong response or I did the wrong things in those moments. They were powerful. Thank you. Yeah, they did what they could. You did a good job. Like we're here. You nailed it. You know, And now I can take over and steer the ship. And now we've got the tools we need, and it's not that difficult anymore, and I can go back to that little person and go like, Hey look, look at this, it's not that bad, and that makes it so much easier, but for me it was meds, honestly. It was a mixture of meds, and then well, moving away from like, white medical practitioners being the Oh yes. At the center of my care. I stopped putting my medical and mental health care in the hands of people who didn't Completely embody the values that I need them to value to make me feel safe, right? So now when I learn about therapy and I do my therapy, it's i'm making sure that it's for me, you know It's the right therapy. Yes Not just what everyone else does because that doesn't work for me. I need something different But meds and therapy, the combo, that was it for me. And I think, honestly, if I hadn't used those medications, I don't know what would have happened. And also, I worked for two years with no one telling me to take meds. It's just like the dog stuff, right? Like, why did no one tell, why didn't no one tell me? All they needed to do was tell me. Oh, that's, I've been asking that for like my entire childhood. Why didn't anyone tell me anything? Dragged me mental, dragged me mental. That is a trigger that I still have, apparently, because I had an emotional response there. I'm still working through that for myself, for sure. I get triggered with the dogs a lot when people don't give the dogs the health care that they need, in these moments when it comes to stress management. That is, that is something that I'm like still working through a little bit because I feel that in my chest. I'm like, I'm going to protect them, okay, you better take care of them, like. I remember one of my really good friends, Namita, She pointed out that, because it's just, this just stacks on trauma and our profession, it's, if you haven't experienced physical, mental, emotional abuse, you will not understand why those of us that choose to train R plus are so passionate about it because you can't learn when you are in that abused state. Learning is not getting done. It, it's more of protective learning and, and how to work through that. And so I think that's why so many of us are so passionate about it because trauma happens to everyone. We all experience it in different ways. And those of us that get into this profession, it's because we care so much and we understand. With the animals and a lot of us, um, have this conversation with Annie Phoenix that a lot of us, animals, that's the first time we've experienced unconditional love. And that's why we're so, yeah, yeah. That's why we care so much. Absolutely. Of course we are going to care so much as people who have experienced and empathize with the things that the animals are going through. But a big thing for me has been learning to manage those big feelings. I don't think I could have continued being a dog trainer if I hadn't learned how to manage those big feelings. And for me, they showed up in, like, my private parts. work with my clients with just being an emotional rollercoaster with them with fewer boundaries and in my social media world showed up with, I would just, I was a little pitbull. I was like, let's go, like, let's fight. Like, I, I, even called it, you know, like, sparring. Like, I'd be like, let's, let's fight, like, let's go. And I, I've been sucked in to that, even in my life, even healed versions of me got sucked into it on social media. With, with less elegance than maybe I have these days in that area. We could scroll back, and I'm sure we could find some spice. It is not a reflection of my best self. As we discussed, I would be like waking up at, you know, 5 TikTok and being like, let's go boys. I'm like fighting in the comments for no reason. Why? And I, I remember thinking, what's the function of this? You're waking up reactive. Yeah, but why was my question? Like, it was reinforcing in a certain sense. A hundred percent. I identified two of the emotional systems that were at play in this. Okay. Rage. I was raging, and I was raging because I was triggered, because of my emotional trauma, and my consistent re trauma just at the injustices that I see around me from my various communities. And like, I wanted to stand up for that little version of me that was bullied, and I saw that version of the person in the dog, and I would come out. Swingin you know? Um, so there was rage there, and then there was also fear, because I didn't feel good enough. Because they were criticising my work, and things that I hold close. To what keeps me feeling safe in the world. And so when they were saying, you are wrong. You need to put a shot collar on, and you're actually doing a disservice to this dog. Why not? I felt a little bit, I felt rage and I felt fear. And so that's what was fueling all of that behavior. And the minute I saw that, I was like, I will not let them win. I will not let that be. I will. I like the minute I saw it as that, I was like, oh, I'm. I'm angry because I'm triggered, and I'm scared because I feel like I'm not good enough. And I managed to get to the root of those things with community, I think, to be perfectly honest. Because now I can turn up to an internet debate with Having been in a group meeting with a bunch of colleagues who are so validating and affirming to me, not just in the way I train dogs, but in my neurodiverse needs, in my needs as a non binary person, in my needs as a queer person, of colour, I like creating an environment that truly With people who truly understand and people who truly, like, lift me up. So now I can go on TikTok and there can be someone making that comment and I go, Oh, that's, uh, I'm not that scared because actually I'm pretty badass and I'm not really very, very, like, threatened by your opinion right now and also I'm not that mad because I live an amazing life and I am not that person anymore and actually what I'm doing in the world is It's creating change in a substantial way, and I'm not going to get sidetracked by this silly little internet argument. It's a blip. Yeah. It's nothing. You're nothing to me. And two years ago, I could never have done that. I would have been drawn in because I would have been so angry and scared. And the need to defend yourself and prove yourself to what? Who's this person? Exactly. But also, it's not true. Like, I'm not at risk I'm safe. I'm safe. I have not got parents bullying me. I have my own house. I have my own business. I control my life. Like, why am I so mad at this little, this person who's, they don't threaten me at all. And that just really helped me to be able to be like, Oh, actually, lol. I love when you say lol. It's just so true. It's a really autistic thing I do. Sometimes I also say the words of the expression that I'm feeling. So if you say something sad, I sometimes go. Sad face, instead of actually making a sad face. I do that too. So funny I love that. That's so cute. Um, sad face. So With all of this, like, this is exactly why I wanted to have you on the podcast. And the whole reason I told you this when we first met to talk about having you on the podcast was because I listened to the episode of bitey end of the dog you were on with Mike and I, the way you have executed your business and set it up to. Accommodate and, yeah, accommodate and, and just set up your mental health, like you're just kind of setting up the building blocks in a way, not only for yourself, but for your employees. And making sure their mental health is in check. And when you said that to Mike, I was just like, Oh, they got to come on and explain that because in order to have a good social media presence and a successful business and a happy staff that likes working with you and you enjoy your job, it takes some fucking effort and a lot of mental hoops to jump through to figure out what works. And so how did you even start? Like, realizing, like, this needs to be a priority. If we want to be successful and grow, this needs to be a priority. I feel like I've been bludgeoned over the head with that lesson for the last three years. In repeatedly not prioritizing, like, or in repeatedly being in environments where that isn't a priority, and then seeing the damage that it does to people. So, I used to work in, like, a really classic, like, big facility, and it just, like, sucked from the People who did the job and delivered up top. It was a very classic system. You know, when you see, like, the two privileged middle aged white women on top who are exploiting a bunch of queer people of color, often who struggle with mental health, unstable housing, etc. Yep. It made me feel sick, honestly, and I ended up being fired on the spot with no savings, nothing, and then sued when I tried to work in the city because They felt like they could do that, and they've been successful in the past doing that with people to breed out competition. Luckily, I, it's okay, I won, and I'm still here. You won in more ways than one. I also took half of their staff as well with me, because they all joined CCA, and now a lot of our staff are people who are looking for something better and different, and by no means am I saying that I have this perfectly. In fact, the last four months has been humbling as fuck for me, because I've never struggled with CCA. We have never We've never ever had to cut anyone's pay, we've even through COVID we didn't fire or reduce anyone's pay. Everyone was taken care of and I took a lot of pride in taking care of people. The last four months have been challenging for us and I haven't been able to be as perfect as I would like myself to be at all times. At all times forever. Um, so by no means is it perfect, but what we have Managed to create is a group of trainers who are like just trying to commit together to support each other and then create better systems Acknowledging that those systems don't exist Like I'm not like we're gonna do this thing here I'm like, I don't fucking know what I'm doing, but that sucked Does anyone want to do something else and that's how it started and it it's gotten I'm in that stage where it's growing and I'm trying to adjust to the stage that we're at. So I'm no longer seeing a full schedule of clients. I actually haven't taught for a few months now. I'm really focusing on like Making sure the trainers have everything they need, and we're getting to that point now where we're starting to re shift. So it's a work in progress, is what I'm saying. Much like all of our healing work, I think of us building CCA very much like healing work. Like I'm trying to create a space that didn't exist before, and it's gonna be painful, and I'm gonna fall on my ass, and I'm gonna fuck up, and that's okay, right? But, it's just like dog training, like, there's no one way to do this. We're kind of all making it up as we go along, right? Like, we're learning from different people. But, you get to just, like, create the world you live in? Kind of? Which is Or the concept! that's what we're trying to do, anyway. And we're working on it. We're only three years in, I forget. I'm really hard on myself about this, but I only started this company three years ago, and we had the pandemic in the middle, and it's a lot, so. I love them. They're the best. they literally, oh, they're amazing. You should come hang out with us one day. I would love that. Don't, don't give me an invite. I will go over there as soon as I can afford a ticket. You're so fun. but I think that's why you enjoy what you do and, and why you have lasted as long as you have is because you have selected the right people to have close by and it's all people that are willing to grow with you. And go through those growing pains with you, and know that mental health is a priority to you. And so they will feel safe in their workspace, which in turn is going to make you feel awesome because you're providing that safe space for people. It's a big, old, trauma healing, good workspace. Yes! It's like Nature's medicine. Like, I'm a, I'm a real gardener. I like to garden. I grow vegetables and it's all when you're creating like a fruitful garden, you have to have different fruits and vegetables. Traditional capitalist gardening is thousands of corns, thousands of tomatoes in a row in a field, right? If you're going to go cool and be like, radical about it. You plant all the plants together, it's called co planting, and they all support each other, and you actually have a better yield over longer periods of time with healthier soil, and you don't have to do crazy shit like spraying pesticides everywhere. Like, we are meant to support each other integratively and imperfectly. I really believe that, and that's something that I try to let happen at CCA, and it's imperfect. I'm imperfect. I get triggered by people in the community, people in the community get triggered by me, and the whole idea is that, like, That's fine. Like, we're all kind of crazy little dogs, and it's just about figuring out where does the barrier have to be. Okay, we'll put a visual blanket here. Okay, well, this trainer needs the white noise machine, and this trainer needs that, and it's hard. it's not easy, but I, think it's the thing that's kept me here. Like you said, it's that connection to other people and I see everyone in our community benefiting from it as well, because as a result, sometimes they come up to me and they're like, people will tell me that I did something wrong. And I'll be like, And then like a day later, I needed to hear that, I love you. and it's like, I hate using, I hate businesses that use the word family because I think it's just so like tied with exploitation quite frequently, you know, like we're just a family, we just help each other out and perform free labor, hell no. but like I want it to be like a community, like where we're allowed to be imperfect but we all hold each other accountable. It's like a co op almost, yeah. Kind of and that's what I'm actually navigating right now within my business is that like it is my face and name on things So I'm like I'm a struggling. I mean you talked with Milena about delegation. Oh, I am learning I am trying I'm doing my best but I am a classic control freak. It's hard for me to let go But we're working on it together. That's but that's about creating trust, isn't it? And so we can all like Lift each other up. You and me both the way I've always described it is like, I have my stove and I have all my pots and I like to control all my pots. I don't want anyone touching my pots. I got the burners. I know what I'm doing. But then more comes onto the stove, things go in the oven, and then I can't juggle it all, and then I'm like, SOMEBODY TAKE OVER! I don't want to give that to anyone else. Meanwhile, my husband's like, we need to get you a VA. We need to figure that out. I'm like, I can't even like pull out of my brain like what I need them to do. So I was like 100 percent agreed. I felt, and still, still feel, a lot of resistance about Working in groups, collaborating. I hate it. I hate it. It's weird that I'm here. I hate speaking, speaking in public, being witnessed and collaborating. And it just so happens that this is my fucking job. But I need it. But you're so good at it. Well, I wasn't though, Mandy. I was so bad at it. The learned skill! Like eye contact. I learned look at three seconds. Look away. How do I hold my face when I'm presenting? I did it all. I learned it all. I operationalized and I'm in the process of operationalizing delegation and by operationalizing it I mean I was listening to Malena podcast and she was like you really just gotta delegate and like give things to other people and I was like Malena, how do I do it? I know! She didn't explain how to do it. I'm like how? I was like Milena, I am here. Delegation is here. How? How do I get there? Right? Like that's what I'm in the process of doing. So it's the trust of passing it off and knowing they can do it. Trusting yourself as well to know what needs to be done preemptively and not just react in the moment. Cause I react as a business owner, like you're saying, I'm spinning plates and I see a plate going down and I go, Oh, quick. And I go over that. It's very reactive. So when someone tells me I'm going to have to sit down and go bullet point by bullet point, how do I make a real, okay, I open Instagram, I do this, I do that, so that I can then explain to the person, I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? You want me to do all this labor that historically has been very punishing? Like, there's a tornado in here. Yeah. I can't pull them out. And communication and collaboration has been very punishing for me in the past. So I'm already like, I'm already like, what are you going to do? How are you going to ruin it? You know, like, which is so fucked up. So fucked up. Not true either. Because these people that I'm working with now, it's like I say, you're safe now. You know, like, you can collaborate safely, you can make a mistake and no one's gonna yell at you, you can misspell something and no one's gonna be like, you're never gonna get into university. like, for real though, like, that's the experience so many people have as they grow up. And it's punishment culture. Right? Consistent small punishments. They shut people down and they shut me down. They shut the dogs down, but we're not there anymore So, I don't know. I haven't got it, but I'm working on it and it's a big part of my healing in community Is this healing in community is still a big thing that I'm just starting almost in the last year. So Highly recommend everyone does it. Even if it's just like one person, that you're like, you're my dog training buddy, and we're gonna bounce ideas off each other, and have a meeting every week, and hold each other accountable, and like, just like, vent at each other. It's the way that you get through this. Like you, you sent me a few questions that you might be asking me before. And I was looking through all of them and I was just like, community, community, community, community, community, community, hang out with people. Most of these, yeah, well, and this industry has been so isolating for so many fucking years because we have never felt like we can talk to each other. And. Not to toot my own horn, but I mean, I am feeling like it is helping others realize that they can talk about the mental health struggles, they can reach out to each other, because we all fucking experience it. 100%, absolutely. I forget that people aren't like this anymore. Like, I remember when we first, we first joined the call and you were like, we were talking about something, and you were like, thank you for sharing that. And I was like, surprised that you were thanking me for sharing it because I'm like, what? I'm TMI all day, every day. Like, too much information all the time. I value the TMI. I don't hold back. I forget that people aren't like that, though. Like, in my community Like, we can join a staff meeting and I'll tell you, like, I was crying five minutes before because of this. Or like, I haven't pooped today, guys. You know, like, I'm talking TMI. Like, Indian family TMI. Like, I don't hold back anymore and that shame has gone. Because I don't give a fuck. Like, I have these badass people who, like, I care about, and they care about me, and like, I don't, I don't care anymore. And it's so great. So yeah, just don't care. It's freeing. It makes you invincible, almost, like, and when you don't have that with your family, like many people in this industry don't, because we often exist in some sort of, like, fractured identity, whether it's like, being queer, I think I'm quite funny because I hit all of them. I'm like, bingo, you know, I'm like, queer, neurodivergent, gender funky. Genderfunky. I've got it all, you know, it's like ding, ding, ding, um, but like, you're not, you might not have that with your family, which is why we are so drawn to the animals, right? I really want the people in our industry to know that you can have that with the people too. And they're likely the people who are around you on social media or listening to this podcast or in the same webinars, like those are your people probably. And like, we might not be as good with people as we are with dogs. But that's fine, because we all kind of suck at it, and that's fine. Like, we can all just, like, be imperfect together. Like, and like, all of us feel that way the same way, and so obviously we're all gonna work together the same way, because our brains are relatively on the same wavelength. So, like, do you Also, they can be very triggering for each other. So sorry to interrupt you, probably a triggering thing. but like, we can be really triggering for each other as well. Like, it's something that I experienced at the beginning of CCA. It was like me and a few folks who all had a lot of similar wounds and there was a time at the beginning where we hadn't figured out what we needed and we didn't have that sense of safety yet and there was a little bit of like conflict at the beginning because we didn't know how and then You know, we'd do staff meetings and I'd be like, we're all gonna go off and read the Crucial Conversations book because we need to learn how to communicate better. I wish I could have done that with my family, right? They would never have, they would have laughed at me, you know, like, come on, like, yeah, be Krishna. But like we're in a, we're safe now, you know, we're in a space where we can do those things and like I want to really stress that it didn't come easy, and that I literally, we're fighting tooth and nail for it, and it's hard, but it's worth it. just like with the dogs, like it's not, it's not going to be easy necessarily to like, learn a whole new thing, right? It's a learned skill. I mean, healing is not linear. Healing is continuous and ongoing. And if you are healing in a community where you can trust one another, that's going to heal all of you guys in a certain way. And it's just gonna make you better trainers, but it, it's hard and I feel like a lot of us, we feel like we can't reach out to others and network when it's like, most of my friends are from the dog training community. Most of my friends I've made because of Woof Cultr because that helped me find my people. Yeah, and everyone who works within CCA now just messaged me at some point. You know, it's like sent me a dumb gif or something and I was like, hey and then we kind of learned that we had a lot in common and then a few years later, we're all working together and you know People start off working part time and then move to full time and then suddenly you're like, whoa, when did this happen? Like you're like my Sister now, like what's this? Like, oh, you are family. You're a unit. Yeah. Yeah, we're like a community is I think the word that really speaks to me Like it is that like interconnection and like we're all holding each other up. We're so much stronger. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I can fall Previously if I start if I stumbled I was fucked. I wasn't getting paid Uh huh, you know like no one else is making the money now I have help and I help them and they help me and it's the coolest I we all help each other. It's very happy families It's flawed. And important. I really just want to like, I can't stress that enough. No, I love that you stress that. I have made so many mistakes. But I love it that you're so real with that because I think it'll make others realize like it is achievable and it does, it's, it's, Oh, listen, it's the true next step of, of not punishing. You don't want to not punish. Don't punish yourself either. You know? Like, I made a bunch of mistakes. Like, you want to actually, integratively, you want to actually inhabit this? Stop thinking about how you interact with everyone else. How do you talk to yourself? Because if, when I stopped talking like that to myself, that's when I truly was able to extend that to other people, right? And so now when people fuck up, I just go like, Yeah, that's what happens. No worries. What are we gonna do next? And I expect that from my people towards me as well. My brain just went off like a little like, Firecracker. Well, because it's I think that's just oh, you're so awesome. It's just it's because This is what people need to fucking hear in order to really Know that like they can grow their business. They can Delegate they can network they can find their people they need To get there and it's it takes time and feeling ourselves out But really it does you're so fucking right it starts with the conversation we have with ourselves and how we talk to ourselves I it's there's I said this I don't know what episode it was But like I am the first person I would break a promise to Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Absolutely. And then you don't trust yourself, and how does that set you up to move through the world? When you don't trust your judgment, you don't trust making decisions, you second guess everything. Hi, hello. Me right there. That's what happens. You have a deep sense of unsafety, and you start hyperactively producing to try and, you know, then you burn out, which just validates this preconception you had of yourself as not good enough. It's a whole thing. It's a spiral, and it just keeps going. It's a trap though, and it's not fair, and it's a trap that was made. What really helped me was just like, it was a trap that was made by old white men. Don't let them win! Don't let them win! Like it just makes it seem less powerful when I think about it that way. I'm like, oh, it's not this thing about me. It's this, it's just an antecedent arrangement that a few blokes set up. And they were just pretty lucky at the time because they had ships and guns and other people didn't and that's how we ended up here, basically. And no one thought to, like, question it. It's not our fault, right? Right. And I just love that we're in a business which, I mean, Controversial. We don't love an unregulated industry, obviously, for safety reasons, but low key kind of like that it's the Wild West out here. I kind of like that we can just rewrite the script. There's no governing body telling me, you have to do it this way, because if they did, they'd probably be wrong anyway, right? Because there's no one way to do anything. I like that we are given the opportunity to, like, rewrite everything, wipe the slate clean, let's start again. And we do that with the way we interact with animals, the way we interact with ourselves, the way we structure our businesses. The way that we start to prioritize mental health, knowing that actually that will trickle down into better profits for us down the line. Like, if you want to be a capitalist, you'll still win. You're still winning monopoly, everyone. Like, this is just a good tactic. But how are you gonna feel about yourself afterwards, right? And how is your staff gonna feel? That's, that's the most important thing, yeah. This is why I have admired you so much for this long, is just because it's the way you've fucking executed your business in a way that isn't the way it's been done. And I think that's why I bring on the guests that I bring on, is because people aren't doing it the way that they taught you to do it. Like, when you went virtual, and I saw you launch your business, I was like, Oh, fuck, like During COVID? Like, that was scary, but you kind of just went full steam ahead. Confident. It looked confident to those of us that were watching, just so you know. I was confident. I was confident. You should have been. I had data to back myself up. I'd worked in person for years. Fancy places that charged a lot of money that I saw none of and it was shit But like the service wasn't good I started working virtually and I was like, wow, this works. Wow. I have it all on recording Wow, I can watch it and I can see that it works. Yes. I was confident and that's the thing that's the coolest is that I don't know, my whole life I've been told that I should, the things that I want to do are wrong, like constantly, from the minute, whether it's getting up to move when I'm feeling a certain way, or being a dog trainer, that was not the right thing to do as a South Asian, oldest born, you know, like I should not have done that. I shouldn't have got neck tattoos, and shaved my head, and you know, all these things, um. But they're wrong, because those are the things that bring you the most joy, like, creating a business that wasn't set up to rinse everyone for profit has brought me immense joy, and getting a neck tattoo so that I can be like, Fuck you, mom, I don't have to be professional because I've done this by myself, and I've rewritten what professional looks like within this community. It feels good, like, do things that make you feel good. well, we have talked for almost two hours now, and I feel bad that I've made you talk this long. No, I had a really nice time. It's really nice to talk about not dog training. Um, and like, the intersections, yeah, this is something that, like, the intersections and the, like, crossovers between dog training and mental health is something that we've been, we've been talking about a lot within my, like, within CCA, so it's so nice to see it be, like, Focused on like this because it's such an interesting topic. You just stemmed a little thought bubble for me. Um, what is the name of the program that you started? It's for professionals. I can't remember it off the top of my head right now, but that is something I want to talk to you about. Yeah, we don't have an official program just yet, but we do mentoring for dog trainers as a service that we provide with our senior trainers, so folks who've been working with CCA for multiple years and work fully virtually, so we are currently creating a more directly Robust syllabus for training trainers, but part of the last four months has been slowing down and Being like I don't have to do all right now. I can just chill for a minute and Slow growth is growth Exactly. Also, no growth is fine. Yes! Are you kidding? I have like 15 people on payroll. I'm fucking fine. Like we don't need to grow anymore. Like I'm fine. I just want to tidy up my house a bit, you know, I've filled it with people. but if anyone is wanting to learn more, especially about virtual stuff or about how we work as neurodivergent folks, as folks who often might not have systems set up to benefit us, that's what we would be looking at. It would be looking at like a kind of package with one of our trainers, just like with dogs, you know, you come in, see what your goals are, and then we'll set up, a mentoring package to like facilitate that growth. It's cool. It's cool. And what we're doing is we're working with lots of different trainers from all around the world. We're kind of learning what they need and what's missing. And then maybe at some point in the future there'll be something very fun and sexy and exciting for everyone. But for now, I'm growing tomatoes. four different varieties of tomatoes, I have to say. Oh my god, your garden. I'm so jealous. I can't. Oh my God. It's been so amazing having you on the podcast. I can't even talk because it's been so awesome. Listen, you're two hours in, you're doing so well. And I already, like, this conversation could go another two hours, so I want to have you on for another one and we can just dig into it more, but. I would love to. I love you. I think you're so awesome. I'm so excited to see you grow and just expand this. And yeah, if you guys aren't following either of Karishma's accounts, you gotta be. Yes, I will send all your links to everything so you can pop them below and Mandy, I love you too. Thank you so much for inviting me on and just being such a great example of like embodying the principles that we're meant to be teaching in like not just the dog training world but in your business and in your day to day life and in the conversations that you're sparking with like people like big names like Mike Shikashio and Malena. I loved, I love hearing them talk about this stuff and it's been really helpful. So, thank you. And if you like what we're doing here on the Leashed Mind podcast and you want to help others find us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on social media, give us a rating wherever you got your podcasts, either that's leaving a review on Apple or giving us a star rating on Spotify, or just leaving a little R plus on our Facebook page. It's all appreciated. Thank you. And we will be back with another episode. Um,

People on this episode

Head Shot

Mandy Boutelle CCT, CTBC

Host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

The Bitey End of the Dog Artwork

The Bitey End of the Dog

Michael Shikashio CDBC
Beers and Biscuits Dogcast Artwork

Beers and Biscuits Dogcast

Beers and Biscuits
Huberman Lab Artwork

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media