E254: 제니퍼 로저스(Jennifer Rogers) - PAALS와 어시스턴스 독

absolutely absolutely yeah uh so um i'd love to talk a little bit about you a little more about you so how did you originally get into the dog world yeah so for talking personally it was forced upon me by my family right so like most of us that are dog lovers i guess um my parents were bringing home every furry critter and dogs were the constant amongst all of them and uh they were treated like my family members so it was a no-brainer that i was going to spend a lot of time with dogs uh as i started to get a little bit older i realized that i really wanted to do something with animals that also helped people and so as i started to explore that field i happened upon assistance dogs and in short that's how it got me here and it's been an incredible journey in between that we can talk about more if you'd like later with working with a lot of different animals along the way absolutely i can't wait to hear all about it um kind of as a stepping stone to that have you always been kind of on the positive training side of things or kind of what got you started there yeah i was always positive minded when i approached animals but i wasn't always influenced that way and i think a lot of people can probably relate to that and what i mean by that you know in growing up we had horses and they certainly weren't clicker trained no one had even thought about doing that back then and so i was taught to do whatever was the traditional methods and i i hated it honestly and so i remember struggling with that as a young person um with my dogs i never competed competitively as a as a younger person and did sports and things like that i just enjoyed their company and so i didn't have quite as much pressure there um but i certainly did basic training with them and when i went to classes um i started to feel the conflict of what people were telling me i needed to use for tools and equipment and so really my mission has been now as an adult to try to change that game in whatever areas i can influence because i am you know a big fan and supporter of operant condition and reward based training um i've seen the fruits of it and um and it just always was what my heart wanted to do so yes i am i am definitely in that in that wheelhouse if you will awesome um so if you were to kind of describe where you are now kind of your current training philosophy how would you how'd you go about that how would you say well i like to think that my focus is really twofold you know that i really want the animal to enjoy the process as much as possible so i really focus a lot on the relationship not just

the abcs of how to train things and that is a big shift for some folks um there are a lot of people who train purely positive and get what they want out of the relationship but don't necessarily factor in what the dog is getting out of it from the dog's perspective so i like to think that over the years i've gathered a lot of tools i've tried to stay open-minded to try to understand all the different training techniques that are out there um but i really believe in making sure that i stay within my own belief system in morality and welfare for the animal and i do a lot to try to educate others about that i like that and i think that um that really fits in with a lot of what we talked about at fdsa in terms of like relationship and how much that can help in training um so now probably the fun question what what led you to start pals how did that whole thing come to be oh okay how much time do we have it and ask how long we have for this podcast okay i'll try to give you the summary so yeah as i was growing up um i was like everybody else trying to figure out what was i going to be when i wanted to grow up and my um father was a scuba diver so i spent a lot of time on the jersey shore uh following his bubbles wondering what was going on down there and um my mother's mother my nana gave me an article about a marine mammal specialist that was from my hometown in new jersey and so that sparked all the wildfires in me and i decided i was going to uh help people with disabilities with the work of marine mammals and so i started to pursue that and did internships and volunteer work i was told by everyone i spoke to that you know i needed to get some practical experience and that training animals would be the way to go and so i did an internship at the mystic aquarium in connecticut while i was in college and that eventually led to a job and so i started off doing marine mammal training and i transferred into exotic animal training in zoos and so i got this array of experience but all along the way i was still trying to figure out how to factor the human in and you know long story short i came to realize that i could do programs and i did i created programs for people with disabilities at some of these places i was always the one to sign up for make-a-wish kids you know i always wanted to to help people and um in the end i realized that a lot of it came down to money you know a lot of these even if they were non-profit facilities their mission was not that and so uh the field for animal assisted interventions with marine mammals never really

evolved in the u.s the way that i had hoped and so i had to start exploring you know what's another way that i can help people and also help animals at the same time and so as i started to really look at that after um kind of following my have to get paid jobs of training i realized i was you know okay at training and i liked it a lot and i loved exploring all of that but i definitely wanted to connect the human element and so when i settled here in south carolina permanently my husband said it's time to take that leap now and let's let's figure out what that looks like you know in realistic terms and we realized there was not an assistance dog program here based in south carolina so it was a service that was needed um and i went to a school to learn some of the ins and outs of how to train dogs for service dogs and how to start a program and then i created pals um gosh it's been over 15 almost 16 years ago now so it's been uh doing that ever since so share a little more about pals what what's the mission kind of what what are your goals what are you working to do sure well pals there it's for palmetto animal assisted life services it's a 501c3 charity based in south carolina um but we have um dogs that we raise and train for service dogs and animal assisted interventions but during that time that we're raising and training them we're integrating them into animal assisted intervention programs and so dogs that are growing up with us will learn how to go into a school and work with children or help kids read that have disabilities uh some of our dogs might work with uh individuals with ptsd and therapy programs that we collaborate with clinicians for and so in this process of trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up they're telling us all along the way like i love this or i really hate this and we really pay attention to those things so it's really a nice mission that way because we really do look at both sides of the coin you know what is it that you're really good at what are the things that you enjoy um and what are the things that are really needed in our communities so we have a wide variety of programs of course covid has put some of those things on hold but we're we're looking to come back strong this year we're ready for that so um in the process of all of that uh my program also became very involved in assistance dogs international and i've served on the board and i'm very active in a lot of committees um that i facilitate or co-facilitate and then i became a founding board member of animal assisted intervention international

which we short as aaii so you'll hear a little bit about that during my uh conference presentation too awesome so um i have a question i know it was on my list of questions but you know it sounds like you're working with a lot of different dogs how many dogs are you guys kind of working with at any given point you know our program usually averages about 25 on average so it's actually not considered a really large assistance dog program and that's because a lot of our focus is on individuals so we try to um place dogs locally mostly in the state of south carolina and some surrounding areas but we like to teach internationally so that's where the adi and the aai part of our mission comes into play is i spent a lot of time on those projects sharing what we've done um trying to help other people do some similar programs and um collaborating so i love that and i was poking around your website last night and was just really impressed by some of the uh kind of notes about kind of how you place dogs and stuff like that do you want to talk about any of that sure um i developed kind of a fun system at least i think so some people agree anyway that it's uh it's kind of like speed dating so i told you a little bit about the dog element right like where the dogs are growing up and they're like hey this is what i might want to be when i grow up you know but even if you want to work at a law firm you don't necessarily want to work at just any law firm right you want the right boss and you want the good colleagues in the right kind of environment and so that's where our waiting list of um people who have applied for service dogs come into play and so while the dogs are being raised and trained we have them come in for what i call speed dating that you might get 10 or 15 minutes with a dog and we do it kind of back to back and it's just a snapshot right it's certainly not the whole story but we already have a lot of information about the dog during those sessions initially we're getting a lot of information about the handler you know we already know in and out pretty much everything you can know about the person on paper but now we want to see when you're actually with a dog different types of energies different type sizes even things about you know how they look um sometimes they'll have memories of old dogs that they've lost and that's just too difficult for them and we try to take all of those things into consideration um and sometimes it's the opposite of what they think they need quite frankly and we we joke about that when the actual perfect dog for them comes around and we choose

that placement for them they'll often tell us like i was really mad at you because i wanted so and so and i was like and they're like but now i know you were right you know so we gotta pride ourselves on being the dog dating you know matching uh expertise if you will and so that's really kind of the fun part of it is when we really get to see everything come together and of course then at that point um once that dog is finished for that client and we individualize their plans uh the client works with us usually on average three or sometimes even four weeks to um fully get kind of uh proficient at the dog's language because i always tell them you got to learn a whole new language now you know and if you have dogs before that means you have to forget that language because sometimes it works against you because we're really kind of focused on that relationship and um you know because we can teach so many things and we can prove so many behaviors but in the end you know there are things that are going to happen in life that were unpredictable and if you're relying on that dog to potentially even save your life then you better have an amazing relationship where they're going to work to figure it out and we have seen that over and over again that's awesome i love i just love hearing like those kinds of stories of like you know those inspirational dog heroes out there kind of doing the thing yeah and it's funny because you know people will contact me and say oh like that was amazing what you taught the dog i'm like that wasn't me that was your relationship like i didn't teach the dog to do that that's crazy so i think we you know sometimes we have to step back and go like that's just the amazing part of dogs like if you set them up to really care about people and to just know some basic things that somebody needs they can take it a lot further than we can yeah and i like that you know kind of you're you're building that relationship so intentionally into part of that process i imagine that that's such a critical part of having a successful service dog versus it's a dog that knows a lot of behaviors well it is especially when you're not working with just one dog at a time right i mean we're still like i said a small to medium-sized program but you know that's still a lot of dogs for just a few instructors and so you know each one has a group that they have to find time to do individual bonding with and individual assessments on and it takes a village you know it really does we have a ton of volunteers that help us as well that's awesome so how is this all going

to kind of fold into your lemonade conference talk um can you share a little bit more about kind of what you'll cover in that talk um kind of what details about about the conference yeah so i mentioned earlier about aaii or animal assisted intervention international so that's like a whole umbrella in its own it branched out of adi the need there for dogs that weren't being placed with people with disabilities directly but being placed with people who wanted to help people so for example there might be a facility dog uh in an education setting so we have dogs that go out to teachers and the teachers implement the dog into the curriculum so they're not just an oomphaloompha sitting in a corner somewhere that the kids like to pet but they're trained they have actual behaviors that they have to um you know perform and also adjust especially because most of the time their classrooms with kids with all different types of disabilities we have uh other dogs that are facility dogs that might work with a therapist an occupational therapist or a physical therapist um so again those are trained behaviors for those folks as well we have other dogs that work um in our department of corrections and they work alongside crisis intervention specialists so they're you know taught to go in and help depreve staff that have been through traumatic incidents there behind bars um so there's this huge world that i think people are still um really kind of pinpointing what where dogs can help and to me that's a really exciting piece of it so it's related to assistance dogs because certainly it's it's some of the same skills and whatnot but it's a slightly different angle it's really for people who want to do pet visiting it's for people who want to um professionally integrate them into counseling you know we there's just a whole giant bucket there and so what i was trying to do is just give people a taste in this uh presentation because there's too much to cover honestly but you know in a short time frame but just give people a taste of you know what are some of the expectations the basic parameters for each of those types of roles and what are some of the fun things that you can teach us examples um i don't believe that there's only one way to train things so you know again this is just an example when i do it sometimes people get caught up on oh i wouldn't do it that way great do it another way just you know again stay within that welfare expectation of the dog and be fair about it but um i i had a lot of fun

just kind of creating these activities and uh implementing some of them some of them we've used in our summer programs with campers to try out we had a literacy reading camp that we use some of these in and some of them were just for straight up fun so the nice thing is is if you never want to do anything as far as a professional goes you can actually still do a lot of these activities for fun with your dog some version of them are there um kind of things that pet dog and sports handlers can kind of take away from your work with assistance dogs to apply to their own training that may be helpful i believe so i mean i think one of the things that i've always tried to do is is explore things outside of my own field which honestly i've done so many different things at this point i'm not sure which we we claim as my field i guess this has been called and interventions right now but you know i also still volunteer in the marine mammal world and i used to do free flight birds of prey shows and you know i mean so what's neat for me is i've had a lot of different experiences to draw from right and so what i hope anyone watching any presentation or informational session would do is to open up their minds about what are the nuggets i can pull out of here you know sometimes it's oh i never even thought about doing that simple little hand target that she did there that was an aha moment for the dog or oh my gosh that that fun activity she's doing would be great to teach my dog focus right i mean so there's just there's so many different possibilities depending on what the individual is really trying to work on with their dog that i think can be pulled out of this and then of course if anyone's interested in actually doing intervention work um or assistance dog work well then straight up there's going to be some perfect examples of things that you would train and implement for those listening if if listeners want to support pals in some way are there ways that they can do that how can they kind of learn more about the organization absolutely so our website's pretty easy it's just uh p-a-a-l-s.org and when you go there there's lots of different ways to connect with us we have facebook we have instagram you know we have twitter we do all those things that everybody's doing right now um obviously there we're a charity so donating is a lovely thing if anyone has the means and feels called to do so but even just networking with us we love collaborating with people and so um right now we have a trainer and instructor position open so if anyone's interested in looking for work in our

world that would be a great thing to share as well that's awesome i mean that just seems like a dream job for somebody you know what i mean yeah i don't work i think so you know it doesn't it doesn't pay as well as for-profit trainers though i do have to do that disclaimer because some people get upset when they see the difference in salaries but you get so much out of this it's just it really is something that you have to feel kind of called to do because obviously um for-profits you know do make more money than we do but it's it's well worth what you give up in in finances if you're able to do it it's a pretty special thing to be a part of to watch people's lives change all the time yeah uh so to kind of round out our uh conversation my last question for you here is if we were to kind of drill some of this stuff down into one key piece of information you really want people to know or to understand um or to kind of take away right from what we talked about today um what would that be well i think one thing i would say is that you know i think everyone's goal as a really good dog trainer is to keep increasing your training toolbox right i really believe in drawing from a lot of different sources to do that but i also think it's equally important that people understand that it's not just about what you're getting from the dog and so much of the focus of research and training techniques are about how to get what we want i think we owe it to the dogs that we claim to love so much to find out what it is that they're getting out of it or not um so that's my i guess my takeaway even though that's not something i say necessarily in the presentation i hope that that's what it kind of conveys to people is that the dogs are really loving what they're doing that there's a good relationship there that it's obvious to folks that these aren't dogs that are being you know asked to do something against their will even though i know there are training um scenarios where that's necessary um so that's that's really my hope is that they understand that there's a professionalism to the field that we're doing um and it's important to know about some of the standards that are in there but it's also just another way to add to your training toolbox awesome well thank you so much for coming on the podcast jen well thanks for having me it was fun and thank you to our listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week don't miss it if you haven't already subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone

as soon as it becomes available today's show is brought to you by the fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to denise fenzy for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing provided by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training