How To Train Your Dog With Love And Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman, School For The Dogs

In New York City, a good dog walker can be hard to find. Dog owners open up their homes to them, and put their most beloved and vulnerable family members in their care, but a majority of walkers have no training or even interest in their chosen career. DivaDog is a walking company that strives to bring professionalism to the industry. Annie interviews its owner, Shelley Goldberg, about her three decades in the business, her hiring and management practices, and finding meaning and soulfulness in the pet care industry. You can reach Shelley at 707-DIVA-DOG Show Notes - 11 questions to ask a potential dog walker - Music: Rockin' Robin cover by Danielle Anderson - School For The Dogs - Store For The Dogs - Instagram - Facebook --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hi, my name is Annie Grossman and I'm a dog trainer. This podcast is brought to you by School for the Dogs, a Manhattan based facility I own and operate along with some of the city's finest dog trainers. During this podcast, we'll be answering your questions, geeking out on animal behavior, discussing pet trends, and interviewing industry experts. Welcome to School for the Dogs podcast. **music** Annie: So at School for the Dogs, we often get asked to recommend a variety of different dog service providers in New York City. And a lot of clients ask us to recommend dog walkers. Now this can be tricky because dog walking is a field where there's so much turnover, that it can be really hard for us to recommend anywhere because we're never sure that the walkers that we like are still going to be with the place. And as trainers we’re really well aware of all the things that can go wrong with a not good dog walker.  You don't even have to have a dog who has a lot of issues to have a dog that can be really adversely affected by even one bad walk with a walker. And that might not be a walker who's necessarily nefarious or anything. It might just be one who's not that experienced.  And, it's a job where most people do it as their careers. Most people kind of dip in and out of dog-walking. So over the years we have created a very small list of walkers that we tend to recommend. And today I'm speaking with the owner of one of the companies that we recommend, the company is called DivaDog. It's owned by Shelley Goldberg, who's based in the East Village. And some of the reasons why we recommend DivaDog, first of all, Shelley is a career dog walker. She doesn't walk dogs herself anymore. She runs the business, but she has been doing walking since 1990. And she's going to talk about that a little bit. Other things that set her apart, she is a lot more expensive than all the other walking companies that we recommend. And I don't know what she pays her walkers, but I'm guessing she pays them enough to make them stick around for a while, which I think again is important because a lot of the times dogs, especially really sensitive dogs, don't react well to having a new walker every three to six months.  And it seems like she has some really good retention with her walkers and really devote some time to training her walkers. Something else that I appreciate about Shelley's business is the simplicity of it. Her walkers are not GPS tracked. She does everything on paper. She prefers to be contacted by phone then via email or in any other kind of way... Full Transcript available at SchoolforthDogs.com/Podcasts/

This episode is all about Real Happy Dogs, the NYC-based photography business started by Milla Chappell, who is known for her photojournalistic approach to capturing the lives of dogs and their humans in situ. Milla tells Annie about growing up as the daughter (and granddaughter) of veterinarians, and how she went from getting graduate degrees in linguistics and English to becoming a wedding photographer, before eventually finding a way to marry her passion for animals, her interest in writing, and her photography talents. Milla shares some tips for getting great photos of dogs, and tells the stories of some of the rescues she's shot and profiled on her popular Instagram. Show notes - Milla shares photo tips - Real Happy Dogs website - Real Happy Dogs on Instagram - School For The Dogs on Instagram Please make sure to rate 5-stars on iTunes! --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hi, my name is Annie Grossman and I'm a dog trainer. This podcast is brought to you by School for the Dogs, a Manhattan based facility I own and operate along with some of the city's finest dog trainers. During this podcast, we'll be answering your questions, geeking out on animal behavior, discussing pet trends, and interviewing industry experts. Welcome to School for the Dogs podcast. **music** Annie: Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I am here with my friend Milla Chappell, who is an incredible dog photographer. And if you follow us on Instagram, this whole month we will be featuring Milla's photos. So be sure to go to @schoolforthedogs on Instagram to check out some of her photos of our trainers at work, some of our students in our classes and in their homes. It's really awesome. We're really excited about it. Milla, thank you for agreeing to talk to me. Milla: Thank you. Annie: So I first met Milla because she was taking photos of some of School for the Dogs’ clients and I was seeing them on Instagram and I was like, who is this photographer that's doing such an amazing job? Not only of getting great pictures of the dogs and having, you know, technically beautiful photos, but also I felt like they were photos where I could see the personality of the dog coming through in a really special way. I remember in particular, Bane the bulldog. Milla: Yes, of course! Annie: People might be surprised that your background is actually more in the veterinary field than in the photography field at least as your family goes. So is that right? Milla: Yes, exactly. So I grew up in a home with two veterinarian parents. Actually, my grandfather was a veterinarian and then both of my parents are veterinarians. So that has been our world from as young as I can remember. That's, you know, the world. Annie: Did you just think everyone is a veterinarian? Millie: [laughs] Well, I do remember on, you know, when you bring your parents to work, I mean bring your parents to school and the parents talk about what they do. I always felt like my parents have coolest job. They would bring in, you know, dogs and cats and I always felt really proud. I loved growing up in, you know, in a veterinary home and in a home that loved animals. And it was great fun for a kid. Annie: What kind of pets did you have when you were growing up then? Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Annie answers questions from listeners dealing with jumpy dogs, and also addresses how to acclimate a nervous dog to all the stimuli she needs to interact with on a daily basis. Have a training question? Leave a voice message at Anchor.fm or at 917-414-2625, or email podcast@schoolforthedogs.com. You'll learn: -Why dogs want to jump & why most attempts to punish jumping don't work -How to use treats effectively on the street -How to have people approach your dog on the street (& how to tell them to go away) -How to employ a remote-controlled treat dispenser to help your dog rehearse good dog manners whenever anyone enters your home Show notes - How to stop a dog from jumping before he starts - "Give Me Space" vests - Treat + Train - Resources for people w/ dogs who have issues with fearfulness in public: DogsInNeedOfSpace.com TheYellowDogProject.com --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hi, my name is Annie Grossman and I'm a dog trainer. This podcast is brought to you by School for the Dogs, a Manhattan based facility I own and operate along with some of the city's finest dog trainers. During this podcast, we'll be answering your questions, geeking out on animal behavior, discussing pet trends, and interviewing industry experts. Welcome to School for the Dogs podcast. Hey everyone. So I am super excited because this is our very first School for the Dogs Podcast: Q&A episode. And I've collected some great questions here that I am going to answer. If you have a question that you would like answered on school for the dogs podcast, there are lots of ways that you can get in touch with us. If you're listening to this through anchor, which is our podcast hosting company, it's super easy through their app. To ask us a question, just click the, “send a voice message” button next to our icon. You will see it as soon as you log in.  You can also send an email to podcast@schoolforthedogs.com or you can call and leave a voice message. (917) 414-2625. Alternatively, you can send a text message to that number. Our first question today comes from an anchor listener. Corey: Hi Annie, my name's Corey. I'm just new to your podcast and I'm also an owner of a newish Labrador puppy. She's actually 11 months old, but, um, my question is the jumping. My dog is extremely excited, very friendly, very happy. We've been through two basic trainings. No one's really been able to help me in the area of jumping. She's a jumper. She's a big girl, she's 75 pounds. And when people come in the house or we're outside a neighbor comes up to her, she just jumps in, of course I say down, of course we do the whole thing with the tree, but it just seems like we just cannot get over this hurdle of her jumping up.  And of course it's not good because she could hurt somebody inadvertently. So any tips would be great. Thanks so much. Love the show. Annie: I'm so glad Corey asked this question because it's certainly a problem that a lot of dog owners deal with, especially people who have young dogs and large dogs.  Jumping up is a totally normal puppy behavior.  Really it's a normal behavior for any dog... Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/

In NYC in the last month there have been nearly 100 dogs diagnosed with the dog flu. To learn more, I interviewed Dr. Andrea Y. Tu of Park East Animal Hospital and Veterinary Behavior Consultations of NYC. H3N2 is believed to have originated in birds and was first detected in dogs in South Korea in 2007. It was identified in March 2015 in the Chicago area; it most likely spread from dogs rescued from South Korea and brought to the US for adoption. In this episode, Dr. Tu addresses the following concerns, among others:  -How the flu spreads  -How you can keep your dog safe  -What to do if your dog is infected -What to do if you run a facility that is frequented by dogs  Show notes: AnnieGrossman.com/podcast12  A primer on the dog flu outbreak in NYC: schoolforthedogs.com/flu  Transcript: Speaker 2 (00:36): Hello humans for this episode. I have interviewed Dr. Andrea Tu, a veterinarian who is with Park East Animal hospital, which is on the upper East side in Manhattan and she also works as a vet with Veterinary Behavior Consultants, which actually sees patients at School For The Dogs. I asked her every question I could think of about the dog flu, which has been a big topic of concern in New York city over the last month or so. I wanted to apologize for the quality of this interview. I spoke to Dr. Tu over the phone and it's not the greatest, but the information is pretty good. So I wanted to share this recording our phone call despite the not great audio quality. I just wanted to note that I've also put up a blog post that has some pretty comprehensive information about the flu and some useful links. You'll find it in the show notes, but you can go there directly by just typing in the URL schoolforthedogs.com. Dr. Tu (02:04): There really are kind of two big strains. So, um, the previous strain was one called the H3NH strain that's been around since about 2004 and it's found primarily in dog and we believe that jumped over to dogs from horses. Um, and that one, it wasn't as big of a deal because it's not as aggressive. It's not as infectious. The current strain now is the H3N2 strain. And this was a newer strain that was initially found back in 2015 and we believe it jumped from dogs to dog, sorry, from, um, birds from Korea. Um, and basically we rescued all these dogs from Asia and from, from, from folks from Korea. Yeah. So the, the current strain is the H3N2 that we're concerned about. It was initially found in 2015. It came from birds and then went to the dogs. (03:03): We believe it started in Korea. So when we adopted and rescue dogs, all these dogs from Asia traveled with those dogs over to us. And so the 2015 outbreak initially was found in Chicago. We didn't actually know that the strain existed at that time. Um, and that outbreak lasted for quite awhile. So the current outbreak in New York that we're dealing with now, we believe came from San Diego and it is, um, it's not the original strain that caused the outbreak in 2015 in Chicago that came from Chicago to New York. But this one may be the same strain, but it came from potentially a different dog that brought it to San Diego back in around January of this year. Full transcript available at AnnieGrossman.com/podcast12 

Not long after throwing her own English Bulldog a princess-themed birthday party, Hayley Mehalco decided to leave her job as an event planner at one of New York's poshest hotels in order to become a full-time party planner for the canine set. In this episode, Annie learns about the ins and outs of Puppy Parties NYC, a business that caters to "dog Instagram socialites," and talks about her own former tendency to roll her eyes at such things. Annie also asks some larger questions about modern pet ownership: Is it okay for people to treat their dogs as ersatz children? Who is the real beneficiary of things like parties for dogs? Link to Show notes - Puppy Parties NYC - Puppy Parties NYC on Instagram - School For The Dogs on Instagram Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-stars on iTunes! Annie Grossman owns School For The Dogs in Manhattan. Learn more at SchoolForTheDogs.com. --- Partial Transcript: Annie: So in the pet realm, there is this whole category of services that I think tends to make a lot of people roll their eyes. And when I was working as a journalist and releases for these kinds of services would come across my desk, I could always kind of tell when my editor would be interested and a story about one of these things, because it was kind of like there was always room to make fun of things people do for their dogs. And if you keep an eye out for this kind of story about these kinds of services, they almost always have the same lead. It's usually something like “Last Friday afternoon, Bethany got her nails done and then had a ballet lesson and saw her Latin tutor. Bethany is a French Bulldog..”  And there's always this kind of sense to it of like, Oh, we got you, right. You thought we were going to say Bethany was a sophomore at ....Although I always find these leads sort of annoyingly dishonest because usually from the title of the article or the picture, you can tell they're going to be talking about a dog. So anyway, I am sure I wrote some stories like this, and I think I rolled my eyes just as I assumed my editor would and the reader would. Because I think there is this general underlying assumption, somehow that people who spend money extravagantly on their pets are just ridiculous. And I'm saying all this because my point of view has really changed. Now, I know it's possible. You might be listening to this and you might be thinking well, of course her point of view has changed, she runs a place called School for the Dogs where people spend money needlessly on their dogs, lots of the time. But I think it's actually more than that. You know, eight or nine years ago when I first kind of discovered the world of dog training and realized that it was something that really spoke to me, I started to think how weird it is that there aren't sections in the newspaper devoted to animals in any kind of serious way. I started to see that dogs could be a hobby that was no better or worse than any other hobby, but that pet ownership really isn't recognized in that way in our society, right? Look at the sections in newspapers, there's a section on sports, there's a section on cooking, there's a section on homes, cars, but if there's any kind of pet section, it has generally been more about showing pictures of cute adoptable animals rather than offering really interesting content on what it means to own a cat or a dog or any other kind of pet and with content that could actually appeal to someone's interest in animal behavior and that kind of thing... Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Nipping is something that tends to drive new puppy owners batty. A lot of the advice you'll find on the Internet suggests scolding a pup for nipping; usually people are told they should use a high pitched voice (as if to emulate another puppy) or to berate the dog in the deepest voice possible. There are still lots of professionals out there who will advise that conversing with a puppy will curb the problem, if done in the right tone of voice. In this podcast episode, I suggest thinking about puppy nipping less as a problem and more as a natural thing puppies do as they start to learn about the world. Both you and your puppy will benefit if he has lots of daily opportunities to use his mouth appropriately. Link to Show notes -  7 ways to deal with nipping - On bully sticks - Work to eat toys --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hey, so if you've been enjoying this podcast, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for listening. We really appreciate when people leave reviews, make sure to give it a five star rating on iTunes. But also, you know, take a screenshot and put it in your Instagram stories so that your friends can know what you're listening to and maybe you'll turn them on to some new ideas about how to deal with dogs. We also are trying to do more Q and A's, so if you have any questions about anything relating to dog training, please share them with us. You can send us a direct message on Instagram at Schoolforthedogs. We also have a Facebook group, which is facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs. And of course you can email us podcast@schoolforthedogs.com. **music** Annie: So my job involves hanging out with a lot of puppies, which I gotta say is pretty awesome, but one downside of hanging with puppies is nipping. Nipping is a totally normal thing that puppies do. But if you follow my advice here, I think you're going to get a puppy that is a lot less nippy than your average dog. And I also always like to point out to puppy owners who are frustrated with their dog nipping that things do get better on their own. I think even without a lot of concerted training, most puppies tend to figure out how to use their mouths appropriately on their own, so that's good news. That's not to say that there aren't adult dogs who do not use their mouth well, but I would say the majority of them of adult dogs, I know, especially, those who have gone through any kind of puppy classes tend to figure out what is and isn't okay as far as where they should be chomping down those teeth. And a big part of that, part of the reason why I say a lot of the puppies I think who go through any kind of puppy play or puppy kindergarten program, the way they figured this out on their own is through each other. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. If you have a nippy dog, I think the first thing you need to think about is where you're putting your hands. Our hands move around. They have lots of smells on them and they are often in and around a puppy's face. I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting with a client who's complaining about how their puppy keeps chewing on their fingers and I looked down and the person's hands are in the dog's face. Well, if your hands are... if you're choosing to put your hands in your dog's face, then you have to expect you might be nipped on a little bit. Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

School For The Dogs' clients Samantha Schwartz and Ben Ment wanted to find a mixed-breed Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, figuring that it'd be less prone to health issues than a purebred Bernese. When Samantha's email inquiries to breeders got posted to social media, she ended up being cyber bullied by hardcore breed enthusiasts/purists around the world. Samantha tells Annie about how this unexpected and bizarre turn of events led her and Ben to Basket, a puppy from the Bernese Mountain Dog Vitality Project, which is run by breeders and geneticists who are working to help modify the breed for the better over time. Link to Show Notes - Bernese Mountain Dog Vitality Project - Basket's Instagram Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-stars on iTunes! Annie Grossman owns and operates School For The Dogs in NYC. Studio: SchoolForThedogs.com Shop: StoreForTheDogs.com Instagram: Instagram.com/schoolforthedogs --- Partial Transcript: Annie: I'm here with our clients. I should say clients, plural. I am here with our human client, Samantha Schwartz, and her dog are the canine client of this team. Oh, who's giving her a big hug right now. Who’s name is Basket and he is this huge, deliciously, lovely black and furry. Just big galoot of a dog who I wish I had a life-sized stuffed animal of that I could just snuggle and cuddle all day long. He looks like a Bernese Mountain Dog. He is not totally a Burmese mountain dog, which we're going to talk about in a moment. And when I first met Samantha and her partner, Ben, they started to tell me about how Basket came into their lives. And I was fascinated. **music** Samantha: I had always wanted a Bernese Mountain dog. I had grown up with labs and retrievers and Ben grew up with a Norwegian Elkhound and a Chinook. We were kind of like, I was just dead set on having a Bernese Mountain Dog. We were living out in Cape Cod, getting his family's house together last spring, just temporarily. And we were like, well, let's get the dog ‘ause it'll be easy to train the dog while we're out here. We have some time. So last year, we started more seriously looking at Berneses again, and he thought that it would be better if we maybe looked at getting a mixed breed. We were looking at all the rescues, there’s  a lot of Bernese rescue organizations. And then we were, we were looking at just different options. And finally we ended up saying, why don't we see about getting a mixed breed, something that is part Bernese. Annie: You were said you were worried about the health issues. Samantha: So Bernese Mountain Dogs have, being one of the giant... they're one of the giant breed dogs, um, similar to great Danes and Saint Bernard's. So they can be up to 150 pounds, females on average weigh between I think 90 and 110, and then the males can weigh much more than that. Because they're a giant breed they have some joint issues and things like that because of their bones, but they also have a particular type of cancer that is really, really prevalent in their breed. They are dying really young. They're very... purebred dogs in general are very inbred. They have what's called closed studbooks and the close studbooks mean that they kind of all ended up being cousins with each other. And because of that, their genetic diversity is leading to many health problems... Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Anamarie Johnson has been with School For The Dogs for three years, and, in that time, has won us all over with her pep, humor, and training chops. In this episode, we discuss her background in rescue work, her childhood pets (fruit flies and incestuous cats), the wonders of classical conditioning and why squirrels at her college were painted orange and green. Show notes: AnnieGrossman.com/podcast8 Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-stars on iTunes! Annie Grossman owns and operates School For The Dogs in NYC. Studio: SchoolForThedogs.com Shop: StoreForTheDogs.com Facebook: Facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs Instagram: Instagram.com/schoolforthedogs --- Partial Transcript: Annie: So I am here with a woman who I have known for three years. I met her in July, 2015. I could almost tell you the date that's, that's how important this day was to me. And um, and to everyone at School for the Dogs, her name is Anamarie Johnson. She is our general manager and has been training with us for almost three years. And is just the smiliest, sweetest person.  All the dogs love her. I think the people love her too. But Anna Marie, tell us a little bit about how you came to be the ray of sunshine you are at school for the dogs. Anamarie: Oh I don't know how I became the ray of sunshine! Annie: You were born in a small town in California. Anamarie: San Francisco, [laughing] not so much small. Yeah. Annie: I picture you raised in the woods by like fairies and bunnies. No? Anamarie: No. [laughing] Anamarie: I was raised in Daly city, but, uh, basically grew up in San Francisco and there were no fairies and bunnies in my backyard. The fact that we got a squirrel that came to my house in high school was like the biggest moment of my mom's life.  It's a running joke actually that, my friend was at my house and my mom just started screaming for everyone in the whole house to come look out the back window because the squirrel had arrived in the back, Annie: The squirrel had arrived? Anamarie: We didn’t get squirrels in Daly City. Annie: What color squirrel was it? Anamarie: Brown squirrel. Annie: Brown?  Have you seen black squirrels? Is that like a New York thing? The black squirrel? Anamarie: We don't have, I mean, we didn't have black squirrels in California. It was just the brown boring, you know, whatever. Gray squirrels. And then where I went to college at UC Davis, I mean we're overrun with squirrels. That was actually a funny thing. Like one day on campus, all of a sudden all the squirrels were, some of the squirrels were spray painted and it was actually a big issue. Cause Davis has like a really big animal department and everything like that. They had actually um, taken and they were spray painting squirrels because they were giving-- Annie: Who's they? Anamarie: Like one of the departments, one of the like the animal research departments because they wanted to test a prophylactic on the squirrels. So they were giving some of the male squirrels and drugs to make them uh, not reproduce because the squirrel population was crazy.  So they wanted to have like a noninvasive way. Annie: So what color were they spray painting them? Anamarie: They were like green and orange. [laughing] Anamarie: And then there was all these like poor undergrads on campus that were sitting on little corners and they were recording cause they wanted to see preemptively if this, whatever drug they were giving them was affecting their “natural” behaviors, so to speak... Full transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Dr. Lisa Lippman, a visiting vet in Manhattan, isn't just a knowledgeable medical professional: She is also a savvy business woman who is using the Internet to build her in-home practice. She and her comedian boyfriend Richie Redding, with whom co-hosts the Pets & Punchlines podcast, chat about the benefits (and occasional downsides) of having a vet come to your home, the "zoobiquity" movement, the 28-pound cat whose star turn that jumpstarted her practice, and more.  Links: Show notes - VetsintheCity -  Pets & Punchlines - Dr. Lisa Lippman - Richie Redding Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-stars on iTunes! Annie Grossman owns and operates School For The Dogs in NYC. Studio: SchoolForThedogs.com Shop: StoreForTheDogs.com Facebook: Facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hi, my name is Annie Grossman and I'm a dog trainer. This podcast is brought to you by School for the Dogs, a Manhattan based facility I own and operate along with some of the city's finest dog trainers. During this podcast, we'll be answering your questions, geeking out on animal behavior, discussing pet trends, and interviewing industry experts. Welcome to School for the Dogs podcast. Annie: Hey, I am here with Dr. Lisa Lippman. Dr. Lisa Lippman: Hi. Annie: And, and the boyfriend Richie-- Richie Redding: Redding. Annie: Okay. I wasn't sure of your last name. Dr. Lisa and Richie have their own podcast which is wonderful. Uh, it's called Pets and Punchlines. While Richie is a great lover of animals. Richie: I thought you were just going to cut it short. Richie is a great lover.  And Lisa is a veterinarian. [laughs] Annie: Dr. Lisa is a veterinarian and she's a visiting veterinarian, which means she goes into people's homes, which I think is super cool for many reasons. But a big reason is, did you ever read those books when you were kids about the visiting vet. Dr. Lisa: No actually. Annie: That series of novels. Dr. Lisa No, I don't know how I missed that. Nobody loved me, I guess. Richie: Me either. Annie: All God's creatures. I think they were called. Dr. Lisa: I mean, I know of them, but I actually never read them. Annie: I never read them either. I know about them, but there’s clearly a gap in both of our educations about pets. What were our parents doing that they didn't make us read those books. Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Annie interviews Carly Strife, COO and Co-founder of Bark, the company behind the incredibly successful BarkBox subscription service, which has earned more than half a million subscribers since it launched in 2012. Carly talks about the concept of turning dog toys into human entertainment, and she and Annie chat about the benefits and challenges involved in creating an office that caters equally to both people and pets. Links: Show notes - 8 tips for training the perfect office dog - Bark.co - "9 to 5" covered by Azalea Grace Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-stars on iTunes! Annie Grossman owns and operates School For The Dogs in NYC. Studio: http://schoolforthedogs.com - Shop: http://storeforthedogs.com - Facebook: http://facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hello everyone. Today I'm really excited to be talking to Carly Strife, who is one of the three co-founders of Bark, and if you haven't heard of Bark the company, you've probably heard of their best known product, which is called Bark Box. It's a monthly subscription service that has been around for about six years and now has offices in New York City and in Columbus. I met Carly at Bark’s Canal Street office, which is full of dogs and the entire space is set up in such a way that the dogs were clearly a priority. Every desk has room for a crate to go underneath it. There are big baskets full of dog toys at every corner of the office, pretty much. There are poop bags by the elevator and a dog treat dispenser by the elevator. And they're also all these different sort of like cubby- like areas where you can hang out with your dog. There's an area that's gated off where dogs could play off leash and they're planning on expanding their offices in the next few months. I believe they now have three floors and they're going to have five floors or something plus a roof deck. So if you are a dog lover and you are looking for a job in New York City, this is the place to check out. So I was really excited to go there and have Carly give me a tour of the offices and I was eager to hear how they went about creating this especially dog-friendly workplace. In addition to wanting to talk about the space, I also wanted to talk to Carly about this kind of new sort of dog product she's created, which I would describe as dog products as human entertainment. Bark Boxes often have a theme and all the toys and treats that are in the box will go around this theme. So my favorite one is the artist box that they had with treats called starry bites and a paint palette squeaky toy. And the best part was the Bob Ross squirrel, a squirrel made to look like Bob Ross. Everything they make is really cute and kitschy and cool. But I admit that I used to be sort of against it all only because it seemed to me like all of their toys were being marketed so that they'd be fun for the humans as opposed to really enjoyable for the dog. But I eventually came around for two big reasons... Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Humans and dogs have more in common than what initially meets the eyes. As non-extinct land dwelling mammals, we are both species that are in a special category that makes up 1/20th of 1/20th of 1 percent of all the species of animals who have ever lived. Annie attempts to look at the dog/human relationship from the long lens of the evolution of life on Earth, and helps us think about about what we can extrapolate about dog behavior based on what we know about ourselves.  Show notes: http://anniegrossman.com/podcast5 A dog trainer's view of evolution: http://anniegrossman.com/evolution 6 ways in which dogs and humans are exactly alike: http://anniegrossman.com/6ways  Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-star on iTunes! Annie Grossman owns and operates School For The Dogs in NYC. Studio: http://schoolforthedogs.com Shop: http://storeforthedogs.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/schoolforthedogs Facebook: http://facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs Partial Transcript: Annie: Hey Humans.  So, so far on this podcast in past episodes we have talked about things pertaining to dog owners like where your dog is going to pee or poop, what your dog is going to eat, etc. But today I want to about two things that affect all of us whether or not we own dogs. Say hello to our special guests: time and evolution. Now I don’t think most people think a lot about evolution when they’re training their dogs. This might be because they're simply too busy trying to figure out where their dog should pee and poop and what they should eat. But it also might be because we tend to think more about dog training than we do about dog learning and dog learning, like all animal learning, has been a huge factor in their success on this planet as a species.  A key to survival is the ability to adapt your behavior in such a way that’s going to be conducive to living in a given environment and natural selection has favorite animals who are good at figuring out what works in order to not expend energy unnecessarily and to stay alive. The inability to adapt to certain environments has caused many other species to not succeed. In the last couple decades, so much about dog training has gotten muddled up with trying to understand wolf behavior.  Now there's some problems comparing dog behavior to wolf behavior, but I don’t even want to get into that right now. My larger feeling about trying to understand dogs by understanding wolves is that it's kind of over-complicating the situation because wolves learn in the same way that dogs learn but dogs learn also in the same way that we learn and we know a lot more about ourselves than we know about wolves.  So if we are fishing for kind of animal to compare dogs to in order to better understand them, I think we are better off looking at ourselves. One thing that I often tell my clients is that dog training is all about understanding animal behavior and we all understand animal behavior a lot more than we give ourselves credit for, simply because we are animals and we are behaving, all the time. Full transcript available at Schoolforthedogs.com/Podcasts

Annie interviews Brooklyn-based dog food entrepreneur (and sometimes trapeze artist) Hanna Mandelbaum on why it matters what we feed our dogs. Together, they consider some of the many choices, including dry vs. canned, frozen vs. fresh, and cooked vs. raw. Links: Show Notes - Evermore Petfood - School for the Dogs Facebook Group - School For The Dogs Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-star on iTunes! NYC-based dog trainer Annie Grossman loves to find engaging ways to help both dogs & humans approach training as an exercise in better understanding all animal behavior. She specializes in working with puppies, teaching tricks, & prepping dogs for commercial work. --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hi, I am here with my good friend, Hanna.  Hanna: My name is Hanna Mandelbaum and I do lots of different, wonderful things, but the reason I'm on this podcast,  Annie: You do do lots of wonderful things.  Hanna: The reason I'm on this podcast is I am the co founder of a fabulous pet food company called Evermore Pet Food.  Annie: And I should mention one of the, one of the wonderful things Hanna does when she's not making pet food is she is a trapeze artist and more than anyone else, I know she does an amazing job of combining her passions, which, I think, the best example is when she did a whole trapeze act dressed as dressed as a dog, wearing a cone. And, uh, Hanna: I was a fresh spay. Annie: A freshly spayed dog. And then at the end of the trapeze act where she was dressed like a dog, she ate her own dog food. Hanna: I'm sure that you should link that in the show notes.  Annie: Hanna and I first met because she and her partner, Alison, literally decided to eat their own dog food, which I didn't even know that it was an expression. Did you know that? Hanna: It is. It's a tech expression, um,from the wonderful world of technology where “eat your own dog food” meant use the product that you're developing. It's, sort of, it's about like a willingness to, like, use your own product and you can't really understand the thing that you're creating unless you use it.  Annie: Oh, okay.  Hanna: Well, I actually didn't know that it was a thing either when I started. Annie: Well, Hanna and Alison started to literally eat their own dog food. Their dog food brand is called Evermore. And to be perfectly honest, um, I met Hanna when I was just starting to become a dog trainer and I don't think I'd ever thought that much about dog food until I started to talk to her. And what I mean by that is I don't think I ever thought about it as anything that was that important to my dog's life. I knew he loved to eat and eating was obviously a big part of his life. And I knew I wanted him to be healthy and live a long time, but I'm not sure I ever put it all together in that I understood that it actually mattered what I fed him. I think I felt like at the end of the day, he's a dog and he can eat dog food because that's what dogs eat. And I think dog food to me was just like one category of thing that I purchased. Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Training a dog where to pee and poop is a major priority for most new dog owners. But there is a lot of misinformation on how to do it -- we don't even have a term for it that make sense! Are we training the house? Is it still "house breaking" if you live in an apartment? Annie breaks down how to take on this task in a way that can be easy and error-free using smart management tools, good timing, and well-thought out rewards. If you have a question for Annie or want to request a guest, join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs  Show Notes 10 Steps to House Training About: Dog trainer Annie Grossman loves to find engaging ways to help both dogs & humans approach training as an exercise in better understanding all animal behavior. Please make sure to subscribe & give us 5-stars on iTunes! Partial Transcript: Annie: Hey everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Today, I wanted to talk about one of the main reasons that people contact a dog trainer, especially when people get a new puppy and that is they want their dog to know where he should and should not pee and poop. Now, I am going to talk in particular about how to work on training a puppy, but most of the tips I'm going to give could be applied to older dogs as well. Whether it's a new dog in your household or a dog that just needs a refresher course, but first of all, what do we call this kind of training? Well for simplicity, I'm going to refer to it as house training. But I think it's kind of a weird way to refer to it because first of all, like most of my clients, I don't actually live in a house and also aren't we training the dog to not go in the house most of the time? So wouldn't it be NOT in house training? I can only think that it's a term that must stem from a time when dogs mostly lived outside and so training them to be in the house meant training them to not eliminate in the house. Um, but actually in advance of doing this episode, I tried to research a little bit the origins of different ways that people have referred to what we're calling house training. And I looked up the word house breaking, which is also a weird term. I think it's generally understood at least as it applies to dog training. But I mean if you're “breaking in” something that you're kind of like doing something to the thing right? Like you break in a pair of shoes or I guess you break a horse, that's another training term, but you're not doing anything really to your house, although, maybe you are, because I am going to suggest some ways that you can set up your home to help with house training, but still house breaking I dunno, it's kinda weird, right? So I put it in to Google's Ngram search tools, which shows when and where and how words have been used. And as far as I can tell, it looks like up until,maybe like the mid 1900’s, housebreaking really referred to breaking into a house. It didn't really have anything to do with dogs. And that's still a definition found in many dictionaries. But then I looked it up in the online dictionary, Oxforddictionaries.com and it gives the definition “housebreak: verb housebroken, housebroken, train a pet to urinate and defecate outside the house or only in a special place; house train.” And then the example it gives is, “an elephant is exceedingly difficult to housebreak.” And I mean, why are you trying to teach an elephant to not pee or poop in your house? Why do you have an elephant in your house to begin with? Full Transcript at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/

There are lots of approaches to training dogs, but they’re not all equally “Good.” Annie breaks down common labels for the kind of training School For The Dogs promotes, including “positive reinforcement training,” “clicker training,” and “science-based training.”  Show Notes and full transcript: anniegrossman.com/2018/03/training/podcast-episode-2-good-dog-training/9257/  School For The Dogs: schoolforthedogs.com  Store For The Dogs: storeforthedogs.com  Please make sure to subscribe & give us 5-stars on iTunes! About: NYC-based dog trainer Annie Grossman loves to find engaging ways to help both dogs & humans approach training as an exercise in better understanding all animal behavior. She specializes in working with puppies, teaching tricks, & prepping dogs for commercial work. Partial Transcript:  Annie:   Hi! This is Annie. Thanks for tuning in to our second episode. In the last episode, I spoke about how I got interested in dog training, to begin with. Today, I’d like to talk specifically about the kind of dog training that we do at School For The Dogs. Now, before I started studying to become a dog trainer, I think I thought of dog training as just one thing. It was a thing that had a beginning and an end, and it was something that you did to your dog and then you were done. And I think these are some pretty common misconceptions. I think when people think about training a dog, they think “Okay. Well, I’m going to get a dog, maybe I’ll take some classes in a church basement, or maybe I’ll have someone come do this training thing to my dog for me. He’ll learn everything he needs to know, and then he’ll be a trained dog and we’ll be done.” And I know when I first got my dog 13 years ago, it certainly never occurred to me to seek out different approaches to training. There was a dog daycare near where I lived, they had classes, that’s where I went. I don’t think I asked any questions about what kind of training they did because I didn’t know there were different kinds of dog training. And even if I had known, I’m not sure I would’ve thought that it really mattered. I just wanted a dog who was trained and however we got to the point of him being trained was besides the point. Now, of course, I have a completely different take on the subject. For one thing, I like to ask my clients to consider what it really means to have a trained dog. There is not one universal training goal that we’re all trying to get our dogs to aspire to. And because every dog is different and each one of us has a different life situation in which we’re injecting that dog, no two people are going to ever have the exact same training goals for their dogs. And beyond that is the fact that training isn’t something that stops. And that’s because dogs are constantly learning. All animals are constantly learning, it’s how we stay alive. All day, every day, both humans and dogs are trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. And because their survival is so dependent on us, they’re really excellent at learning from us, which means training isn’t something that just starts when you enter a training class or when you strap on a treat pouch and it’s not something that ends when you get your puppy kindergarten diploma. Of course a lot of the time we inadvertently train them to do things we don’t want them to do. And that’s why I think it’s important to understand the basics of learning theory and understand how conditioning works in order to train them more effectively to do the things we want them to do. That’s why it does matter what kind of training you are doing if you want to train effectively and look at why what you’re doing is or isn’t working. Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

In our very first episode, meet your host, dog trainer Annie Grossman, School For The Dogs' co-founder. Learn about her journey from average-jane dog lover to passionate defender of ethical dog training and ownership.  Annie Grossman: http://AnnieGrossman.com  Show Notes: http://schoolforthedogs.com/podcast  School For The Dogs: http://schoolforthedogs.com  Shop For The Dogs: http://storeforthedogs.com  Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/schoolforthedogs  Please make sure to subscribe & give us 5-stars on iTunes!  NYC-based dog trainer Annie Grossman loves to find engaging ways to help both dogs & humans approach training as an exercise in better understanding all animal behavior. She specializes in working with puppies, teaching tricks, & prepping dogs for commercial work. Partial Transcript: Annie:   Have you ever thought about starting your own podcast? When I was trying to get School For The Dogs Podcast off the ground, I had a lot of questions. How do I record an episode? How do I edit an episode? How do I get my show into all the apps? Is it possible to make money from a podcast?  The answer to every one of these questions is really simple. Anchor. Anchor is a one-stop shop for recording, hosting and distributing your podcast. Now, Anchor can match you with great sponsors who want to advertise on your podcast. That means you can get paid to podcast right away. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now by reading this ad.  My favorite part about using Anchor is that I can record whenever I feel like it, directly into the app. I’m pretty busy, so I really appreciate how easy they’ve made it to podcast. So, if you’ve always wanted to start your own podcast, and make money doing it, go to anchor.fm/start. That’s anchor.fm/start, to join me and a diverse community of human podcasters already using Anchor. That’s anchor.fm/start. I can’t wait to hear your podcast. [Intro] Hi! My name is Annie Grossman and I’m a dog trainer. This podcast is brought to you by School For The Dogs, a Manhattan-based facility I own and operate along with some of the city’s finest dog trainers. During this podcast, we’ll be answering your questions, geeking out on animal behavior, discussing pet trends and interviewing industry experts. Welcome to School For The Dogs Podcast! Annie: Hi! This is Annie. Thanks for tuning in to our very first episode. I’m here with my co host, Amos, a 12 year old yorkipoo. Say hi Amos! [barks] Good job, buddy! Some of you might know me from School For The Dogs. Those of you who haven’t been by School For The Dogs, if you are in New York City, definitely come on by. We’re located on East 2nd Street near Avenue A. We host classes, play groups, private lessons and I’m sure that during the course of this podcast, we’ll talk about lots of the going-ons at School For The Dogs, and you’ll get to meet some of our trainers but also some of our students, both human and canine. We also have a small boutique where we have a great selection of interactive dog toys and training gear, which you can also find online at Storeforthedogs.com. So as this is our first episode, I wanted to take some time to talk both about how School For The Dogs came to be and my background in dog training. The dog training we do at School For The Dogs is called many different things, sometimes it’s called award-based training, sometimes it’s called clicker training, it’s called positive reinforcement training, and in the next episode I’m going to go into some detail about each of these labels and exactly what they mean... Full Transcript at Schoolforthedogs.com/Podcasts