(please note these episodes are recorded chats in Starbucks so may have more background noise than a usual podcast)

Dawn Walton, a human therapist, and Jess Probst, a dog behaviourist talk with Jessie Montague, the owner of Atlas the Vizla (story_of_atlas on Instagram)

She has been on quite the journey over the last 3 weeks to get Atlas to the point where they can take him home again and enjoy their pet dog - rather than be scared of him.

This journey has required that Jessie and her husband both work with Dawn on their personal anxieties, whilst at the same time Jess and Jessie have worked on helping Atlas make better choices (almost like we linked up with our last podcast). The change in Jessie and Atlas is remarkable, and it really shows the power of a combined approach. Human owners helped by Dawn, and dogs helped by Jess. It's a unique approach and never has it been better demonstrated to be effective than with Atlas. He's a lucky dog!

Atlas is a 'famous' dog on Instagram with thousands of followers. This means that Jessie has a constant daily barrage of trolls that think they know best and can offer their opinion as fact. The worst of these are the dog trainers (aggressive dogs, or aggressive trainers??) who not only offer their opinion, but criticise those doing their best to work on the team, ignoring the clear evidence showing improvement. Some of these people even go on to report Jessie and Jess to the police for animal abuse. It takes a thick skin to live your life so publicly, and when you have unresolved issues with your mental health it is almost impossible. This is another area where the work that Jessie has done with Dawn has helped. It hasn't made her bulletproof - nothing would. But it does make it easier to see that it's not about her.

Atlas's journey has helped many other owners, and will continue to do so. This podcast does a deep dive into some of the steps that have been taken, and why Jess took them.

*There is a webinar referenced for Tuesday. This webinar is on dog aggression and although it will be completed at the time of this podcast, there will be others. Please sign up to Jess's Patreon at ⁠https://patreon.com/DundeeDogTraining⁠ to be kept informed about all events

Episode 13 - helping others

We're all screwed up (and that's OK)By Dawn Walton / Jess Probst May 21, 2021