This essay appeared in the July 9, 2024 issue of our newsletter and comes to you from a speech that SPA volunteer Yona Rappaport gave at the 2022 Shelter Behavior and Enrichment conference. Enjoy!
Collaboration. It's a key part of being an ethical dog trainer, shelter or daycare worker. One of the best ways to uphold this standard is to seek help and advice from those who have more experience and education than us. Receiving criticism was one of the hardest skills for me to cultivate. Growing up as an extremely shy child, I found it more comfortable to stay quiet than to share and risk a critique. Putting your ideas and practices out into a public arena such as social media, a trusted group of colleagues or presenting them at a conference is sometimes a set up for negative feedback. We all have a choice in how to respond. You can put up a wall and either ignore or combat those opposing ideas, villainizing or shutting out the person offering feedback. Another option is to use those moments as an opportunity for self-reflection and open the door to the possibility of growth through discussion and learning. To illustrate this point, I’d like to share just one story that led me to speaking here today.
On April 2nd of 2021, a little over a year ago, I shared a video with a large group of colleagues at a regular virtual meet up where we discuss ideas, issues, share videos and help each other improve skills and think outside the box. On this day, the discussion surrounded the implications of bite placement and I happened to be working with a dog who had a bite history. At the time, I was working at a high-intake, municipal shelter and my job was to gather information and make recommendations to shelter management regarding the pathways of these dogs. At this point in my career I had two certifications under my belt in addition to eight years working with pet dogs. The previous day I had filmed a session as a piece of the puzzle in gathering information about this dog. Two people were with me, one as a backup handler and the other was observing and learning.
As the video played, I sat and watched the zoom gallery as the face of every experienced trainer changed from neutral and inquisitive to tense and concerned. I felt like they were watching a horror film. From wide eyes to averted gazes, hands moved to cover mouths and necks; the human’s way of displacing stress. I heard gasps from those who were not muted, someone even asked if I was afraid during this session. I replied that I was not and all I could say was that the dog had “warmed up” later and that I had seen more affiliation in a previous session that was not filmed. I truly did not know what they had seen that was so concerning and even worse I could not explain the choices I had made. The seven seconds of full freeze at one of the handlers was replayed for me 3 times in slow motion and I still questioned if that is what was happening. Although no one was rude to me or chastised me for putting myself and others at risk, I felt embarrassed, ashamed, and confused. We moved away from that video and discussed the implications of his bite. Others shared stories and the spotlight moved away from me and my work.
Years ago, before I knew I wanted a career with dogs, I took a women's studies course at community college. During a discussion of harassment in the workplace, a student shared something that has stuck with me ever since; she said that her personal criteria for harassment was if she was still bothered by a comment once she went home. If she forgot about it later, it was probably not worth taking action but if she was thinking about it that night or even days later it would definitely be worth it to report to HR.
A week went by and I still felt the churning in my stomach thinking of the feedback I had gotten. I was devastated and paranoid that these trainers were thinking or speaking badly about me. My thoughts were getting away from me and I played out scenarios in my head of how this could impact my ability to get clients or work in facilities in the future. Instead of anger (something I struggle with when I feel put-down), my embarrassment turned to concern. I realized that this had happened because there was no one I was working with who had significantly more education or experience than me. I had co-workers but we were all learning and leveling up together at a similar, somewhat slow pace by reading books, watching webinars, listening to podcasts and attending conferences. The CEUs proved we were doing enough to boast certifications… but just enough.
No one was there to regularly check my work, offer advice or let me know when I had crossed a safety or ethical boundary. All of a sudden, I realized that I had, without a doubt, cultivated some bad habits and been practicing them for possibly years. Even worse, I was teaching these to other people. My volleyball coaching mentor used to speak about my 12 and 13 year old players by explaining it takes a player 3,000 good repetitions to break a bad habit. As a 30 year old adult, I was faced with the daunting realization that it might take many more for me to rework my ideas and muscle memory, especially when under some amount of stress.
I decided to contact the facilitator of the group because my confidence had been completely damaged and I wasn’t sure how to make changes with this new insight. I felt stuck in my job and knew there wasn’t exactly a program out there that offered the type of individualized learning I was looking for. This person acknowledged how I felt and agreed that the position I was in was not allowing for advancement of my skills. She also told me that she was concerned for my safety. The next thing that happened was highly unexpected and changed my life. She offered to mentor me and have weekly check-ins to review my work with shelter dogs, and private clients.
It’s been a year since that first week and our check ins have slowed to as-needed. My skills have improved exponentially, I have more confidence in my observations, my execution of procedures and I’m at a point where I can have fun being creative with behavior modification in any setting. This means more choice and control for the animals I work with, less wasted energy and time using things that were not effective and I’ve gained a clear and steadfast ethical code that I can fully explain to anyone that asks. Over the past year I’ve had multiple behavior cases brought to full resolution which was something I had struggled with previously. To borrow from Dr. Susan Friedman, I’ve had some significant deposits made in the trust bank account with my relationship to LIMA.
If I hadn’t received that very difficult criticism, if I hadn’t been in a mindset to think beyond my emotional reaction to it, I would never have been able to get to the point where I am now. And I’m not finished learning, none of us are. But I’ve been handed skills to find ways to learn more, and I seek out critiques now because I know that’s how I will continue to do better. I’m careful to share my work with trainers who I feel are reputable and that I trust. I've developed a small group of colleagues who I can ask questions and who I can trust to be honest with me about checking my work. I don’t expect them to tell me what I’m doing right, I expect them to pick apart the details so I can iron out snags in my mechanics, my planning, my environmental antecedents, and my recommendations.
Not everyone is in a place in their lives where they can accept criticism. That is understandable, whether it’s due to being on the climb of the Dunning-Kruger effect, or feeling defensive and sensitized after past negative experiences with having their skills assessed and critiqued in a way they could not hear safely. If a person is not open, they cannot learn. This openness is a spectrum that fluctuates throughout a lifetime. Learning can be uncomfortable a lot of the time and breaking through our defenses of cognitive dissonance, biases, ignorance and arrogance can require the perfect storm that is the right place, right time, and right people. From experience I can say that the more helpful criticism I hear, the easier it gets each time.
For those who have trouble with this type of feedback, it’s important to recognize this and to shield yourself from criticism that might shut you down. This may mean not posting on social media, despite how popular it may be. We all know how brutal the public can be and for this reason, I keep my accounts private and do not post about my work with shelter dogs. I do, however, post my bird training and enrichment projects. It’s my hobby and I never catch myself thinking about those negative comments later in the day.
Of course, sometimes critiques are invalid. Ultimately, discerning between constructive criticism and misplaced judgment can be difficult. This is why it is vital to understand the science at play and have the ability to be fluid and confident in our explanations.
How can we use these situations to our advantage? The best way to handle this is by engaging in an evidence based discussion. Especially in sheltering, it’s important to turn “battles” with management into learning opportunities to sharpen our skills, find new supporting facts and through these means, gain a deeper understanding of why we do what we do. Practice your responses to difficult questions and allegations, reality check these with trusted colleagues. If you find yourself in a position to critique someone else, check your position with that same group of peers and mentors before offering the criticism or advice.
When offering that critique, no matter how valid, don’t be discouraged if the recipient does not immediately change their mind. This is a criteria for success that will have a low success rate and ultimately lead to burn out. The mind is like a garden where seeds can be planted by a member of our community. It’s hidden in the soil until the next person comes to tend to that seed, watering it daily. Yet another person can offer warmth and sunlight until the seed produces a healthy fruit ripe for harvest. Success is when that fruit’s seed is planted to start the process over again with a new individual. Some seeds take longer to grow but if we light it on fire, that scorched earth policy can take many seasons to heal. Who knows what seeds will be dropped there in the meantime. For myself, LIMA with the people is a skill I sometimes struggle with. Patience and compassion are behaviors that can be built like any other, and to penetrate hard soil we must be able to understand other perspectives. We can understand without agreeing.
I’m so lucky to have found my community of behavior geeks but it took nine years to get here and I feel like I’ve just started. Instead of seeing this as a disappointment, it fills me with hope and excitement in a world where anxiety, depression, addiction and suicide run rampant. I want to thank each individual that has set me on this path and led me to this group, some of which are here today and others wouldn’t be caught dead at this conference. My hopes are to bring in other people who found their way here so we can grow the community of LIMA animal workers who accept that perfection is never the goal and strive for consistent feedback.
As a community growing each year, it’s important that we all uphold similar standards of practice. There is a balance to be had between rigid but flexible, steadfast but open to improvement, respecting the ‘experts’ but always thinking critically so that we never find ourselves blindly following this guru or that. We cannot let perfection be the enemy of the good; almost all progress graphs have hills and valleys from day to day. Learning is messy because humans are messy. Our job is to seek people who help us to zoom out on that graph and verify the steady up-trend of progress over time.
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