Hey, welcome everybody to the Source Podcast, everything working dog.
I'm excited to record another week and have a great conversation with somebody that is very
special to me and really a vital part in what we do at CCU and has been for many years.
And I'm proud to not only be a friend but also to see her come from literally no experience
to where she is today and continues to grow each and every day.
I don't know how she does it.
But she does.
And she handles it.
And always available and always there for the dogs and information and just handling and
managing the various aspects of the kennel.
It's remarkable to see where it's come from to where it is today.
So I have never clock on with me today.
Dev, how are you?
Good.
Thank you.
We got voice of reason with us as well and ready to get this thing kicked off.
Yep.
That's how you have voice of reason.
Come on.
Yep.
All right.
I'm Maya.
I never have to introduce myself.
That's usually as far as it goes.
This is 2024.
You have to now.
You got to get involved.
You got to people got to know who you are.
So I'm on tonight to talk about the kennel.
Like it's, there's all of these things that we have going on in the background that no
one ever sees, things that are front facing, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's probably
one of the best things that's ever talked about with CCU, especially what our clients.
I get so many compliments about the kennel.
And it's not really about the looks or the aesthetics always.
It's about the care that you guys and your staff give to each and every dog that comes
to the kennel.
Now, we're walking to kennel and I go, hey, you guys smell that and there was like, no,
what exactly?
Exactly.
Back to what I'm talking about.
And it doesn't matter when, if I come in all the hours on the weekends, when you're
not there, there's been several times that I message you was like, man, these girls and
guys have done a great job at the kennel at seven in the evening and I'm just like, man,
it's just so clean, so sanitized and the dogs are just so well taken care of.
So we're going to talk a lot about that.
Talk about managing a kennel, a working dog kennel, which is vastly different than, you
know, maybe a luxury sweet kennel.
But really a lot of the standard, it should be the same.
It's just the types of dogs that we get in and the types of clients that we have that
bring their dogs to us and give us an opportunity to trust us with their dogs, which is
remarkable as well.
So that's what we're heading today and I hope that everybody listening learns as
always at least one thing that can help them in the future.
So, Dave, can you please introduce yourself?
Yes, I can.
My name is Deborah Clark.
I am the current kennel master or kennel manager for custom kennel unlimited.
I am coming up on my six year mark almost, but come in.
Don't say, Dave, that means we're getting old.
I think you got a very young age.
Yeah, you did.
You did definitely a lot to learn from a young age.
I think it's important for people to know that this industry is riddled with people just
like you, right?
They're now in positions now or impacting our industry and I think what they're going
to learn from that is that there's an avenue.
I get emails, I get contact all the time from people that want to get into the industry.
But I'll say that you took the first step to do that, right?
Nobody gave you anything.
You took the first step for whatever reason.
I want to talk a little bit about that.
Why you even decided to get into this industry?
I led you to even want to get started in this industry.
Yeah, so initially, I needed a personal protection dog.
I was living in Florida if you remember.
I'd been down there for about 10 months when I reached out and I was like, I'm coming back
up just when summer was ending and you were like, cool.
That's when I was like, I really just want a female German shepherd.
I didn't know what a female was going to entail me like, be just got this dog.
So I started out because it was relatively the same price as becoming a handler for the full
service, narcotics detection handler course.
Then why was there?
Basically, it was like, oh, this place is amazing.
The old facility, I definitely felt a lot more comfortable as a young one.
And I was 21 at the time.
So like all these big guys are around.
But I felt completely comfortable.
And I was like, I would love to progress in there.
And you just happen to have that opening for a kennel technician at the time.
So that's how I really started up into it.
But originally, I just wanted a personal protection dog and got sucked in.
So you know, you kind of said, do I remember?
Yeah, I really don't remember.
You know, I remember very vividly, even the conversation we first had about thinking
on, or you thinking about coming on staff when I first proposed that to you.
We were in the classroom.
I said, well, what's your plans?
What do you plan on doing?
Why don't you think about this and getting your foot in the door there and then seeing
where it leads.
Yes.
And it's vastly different, right?
And then I was like, I'm not sure if I can get the training, like it was so different.
And it doesn't seem like that long ago, like time for us.
Definitely.
And when I was done with dogs and we didn't have a whole bunch of dogs, I would be helping
out in training.
As long as I wasn't in front of the students, I was perfectly fine.
And then when we did have surplus of dogs, I just remember everyone kind of chipping
into help me or students were there to help just like how we have now.
Right.
Now your mother-hand at the can.
Oh, yeah.
Definitely.
Each class is like.
And it's remarkable to see the growth.
But you know, that goes to putting your mind to something and working through the plan and
really taking those small steps of change and some habits and getting involved in, just
making those changes and taking being able to take the step forward to jump off the cliff
if you will, which now leads us to this.
It's just you taking those progressive steps in order to then be now.
I mean, even the staff that we had back then, how little staff we had.
Now, like it's just, yeah, it's a totally different operation.
And now, virtually everything runs through you in the can.
Like all the medical.
Those procedures have changed.
We don't even make any calls on the training side anymore.
That's all over the hand through you and your decisions and such like that.
So that's that's great to hear.
You know, that somebody can come and get started in this industry, which is really a lot of
questions we get.
Well, how do I get started?
We'll take the floor step.
Yeah.
So get training, get involved with an organization like us.
I've had somebody email me asking how to get started.
And they lead off with, I can't leave the house.
And I don't want to take any fancy classes.
Well, what do you want to become?
Right.
It may not be fancy classes, but it is learning and training.
And I wouldn't recommend putting your hands on dogs unless you've been trained, at
least not professionally.
So when it comes to, you know, the amount of knowledge that you have that you've
amassed over these years now and being in place in situations where you have to work with
that and all this stuff.
You know, there's there's always like that split between hands on experience and the
educational piece that goes with this.
You know, and I know that you being the person you are, you do a lot of research, you
talk to other industry experts in order to get the best answer.
And remember connecting you with a client of ours that was looking for some advice and I
mean, it literally took you two minutes to answer the email with a long email of the
right answer, right?
Yeah.
Now, something that I wouldn't be able to do.
So, you know, how do you feel about when somebody wants to get or has the hands
on experience versus the knowledge base and the knowledge that you have?
Do you perceive a difference there?
Or do you, would you promote one over the other?
I definitely would say I have mixed feelings almost to 50, 50.
Obviously, I think hands on experience is amazing.
There are a couple of things, like especially in the kennel setting and not just for
working dogs, but you have to be able to see dogs reactions in person to learn body language.
We try with photos and videos and little like gifts to try and see like what the body
language is.
It doesn't do it justice.
That's something you have to learn in person.
There are a ton of other things you have to learn in person as well and repeat or have
that repetitive nature to learn those things.
But I also can't knock the book smarts, even if I'm like a hate testing or, you know,
I hate having to try and remember this.
It all comes back to like the book smarts is what has probably saved a lot of dogs lives
in the working world and in my kennel specifically with the term that I've been in as the
manager.
But most specifically, if I didn't have the book smarts, my first dog Yati probably wouldn't
have made it that far because we used her in some of the classes for first aid and our
kennel injuries class for teaching on bloat.
Her actual x-rays, her photos of her stomach when she went through that.
If I hadn't known about those things, then she probably wouldn't have made it through
that and lived on for another three or four years at that point.
So I think it's a half and half between the book smarts and the hands-on experience.
But I would say most definitely for working dogs, hands-on experience is always going to
give you a better advantage than just having those books smarts.
Yeah, I would definitely agree, right, hands-on experience, reading these dogs and getting
the experience of the leash, the grooming and all those things.
We can read it in a book all day long.
We can learn the protocols that we set out, but then we got to reinforce that with the
hands-on.
So what that being said, looking at the online kennel master course that we offer, right?
Educationality, people are rave about it because of the amount of information that's
contained in that course.
Would you suggest that course over the hands-on course or is there a difference between
the two online or the people that take the online class really missing out or what would
you say?
I would definitely say that they are not missing out on anything but the practical exercise.
There are different types of experience that you can get.
You might have a dog that you are doing these things on because you've never cleaned
their crate before and you're learning all these things or a lot of people are already
starting their kennels.
I know a lot of people who are already volunteering and helping out at other places like
human societies and whatnot as they're going through here.
I can name off a couple of people who are doing that just volunteering to get experience.
There's a lot of people that are not just taking that course online and then just saying,
oh well, I've got the certification because I did all the book stuff.
They're already actively out there searching for things.
I think if you aren't searching for things or actively involved in something though, then
yes, you would probably be missing out.
So it would be more to your benefit to come to like an in-person course and get some hands-on
experience.
If that's all you plan on doing is that two weeks here get your book smarts and that experience,
then yes, you should probably do an in-person course.
If you aren't self-motivated enough to go and get more experience for yourself.
Yeah, you know, we have a lot of students that will go back and forth.
Well, I'm just not good at the book smarts, but hands-on I'm great.
Yeah.
But you know, we truly believe that those go hand in hand, right?
Especially for our staff where we get questions from clients.
We've got to make decisions and we've got to be able to reliably make good choices based
on what we've learned and do it consistently, right?
Because nobody should come into the can on yet one answer from you and get a totally separate
answer from another staff member.
Yeah.
We should all have continuity in that regard.
And that's very important because, you know, especially from a student standpoint, as we
know, well, someone so told me to do this.
So we always try to have that continuity if you will.
Yeah.
And I always take the default answer, hey, don't talk to me about it.
Talk to the Deb.
She has the right answer every single time.
And unfortunately, that's not my expertise.
My expertise is training.
So I defer those questions to her because she's going to give you the right answer every
time.
And if not, she has the resources to get the right answer, whether it's through the vet or
the resources that you've accumulated over the years.
Yeah.
Hey, go ask training this or go ask Kendall this.
They're going to know for that specific thing.
It's one of my favorite things hearing is when one of the trainers comes up like, oh,
my student just asked me this.
Can you give me the answer?
I'm like, just send the student to me.
That's probably the easiest way so that nothing gets misinterpreted anywhere.
So absolutely, now I think it's something it took us a while to get to that point, right?
Because we each had our hands and things that we should have joined the line in the sand
with and said, hey, I don't deal with that.
That's a dental, that's a double clark thing.
You know, but one of the best things I think that we did was take injury, take decision-making
on how a dog progresses through training, nutritionally, health wise.
All those things we took it out of the hands of the trainers and put it in the hands of
you and your staff.
My outlook is I got to get this guy in this dog through training.
Yeah.
And that takes that kind of that approach out of it because when a dog's injured or something's
going on, we put it in your hands to make the decision on whether that dog is allowed to
continue in training, whether it needs to go to the vet.
It needs to happen nutritionally and or medically in order to continue.
And I firmly believe that's probably one of the best things that we ever did.
You got in department saying, hey, this guy has to be done by this period of time.
And I remember a dog actually getting hurt, breaking her tooth.
And you saying no, take them to the vet.
The vet gives us the guidance of what we need to do.
And that dog and that handler actually was out of training for several months.
I think one of the biggest problems.
And it's not like a problem in the K9 world.
I'm in maybe it is, but within the company talking between or communication between
training and kennel was always afraid because they're like, oh, they can keep working.
They can keep doing this or, you know, hey, I'm going to go right on your board.
Don't touch my board.
I'm going to go to the doctor's and my response now, but when we started kind of separating.
Okay, like you got to do an injury report.
That's going to give Deb all the information she needs or Deb's going to do it.
But this dog's got to get cleared before they go back and training.
And I definitely think that was a great decision.
Not because I'm trying to like, you know, to my own corner anything.
But more for just raising that care of the K9's percentage.
For a fact, when we started or implemented the weight management and nutrition classes and the actual weighing of the dogs,
which was, you know, an idea that had been wanted, but had needed to be implemented over the course of time.
And then I was here to research and do that.
That also led the way to make sure that we didn't have those dogs where they're like, oh,
they're working dogs, they can be a little bit lighter, you know, and then their dogs like have all their ribs showing.
And you're like, that's not a little bit light.
That's a lot like, so we eliminated those types of problems as well.
Like unless it's an actual medical issue that the dog has something wrong that can't just be fixed by,
you know, messing with the protein and fat aspects of their food.
So I definitely think that was good overall for the health of the kennel because kennel technically owns so many dogs throughout the course of a year.
It's not just clients, dogs who are coming in, who are already on set schedules or set training plans and whatnot.
Yeah, you know, the the expats of what you guys deal with, right?
And I think a lot of people don't realize like how many problems could arise or how many things that you've seen over the years through experience and why sometimes we make the decisions.
We do and how a dog comes in, you know, what is allowed with a dog to board with us, what's allowed in the kennel, what's not allowed in the kennel.
How long the dog can stay in a kennel notification of clients or something was to happen like there's so many things that go on in the background that nobody ever sees, right?
They just think, well, we just drop our dog off and then we just pick it up, but there's so many things that go on.
And behind the scenes that people just don't get to see that you take care of. And of course, you and when I say you, I'm saying your staff, but you're crying down and get them up to poor with what the requirements are.
And that's also been some downfalls, right?
All right, so that's jump into that downfall when I mean by that is there's been staff that there's so much to do.
And we've learned over the years or you have to.
Yes, that information out in pieces because when we used to flood them and make them drink out of that fire hose, if you will.
We had bad results and retention.
Right, definitely. Yeah, there is a lot of information and again, going back to hands on experience.
If you've never dealt with working dogs before, that is like what I would equate to culture shock going from a whole my cute little like shit sue or my toy poodle comes up until like even myself up until the point of working for the company.
I think I had raised one German shepherd and he was like the sweetest boy ever and then it's all little dogs. I had never done anything larger than that and then I come in and there's, you know,
masks and rot wailers and doberman, huge, 90, 115 pound German shepherds and again going back to the types of training we used to do, there are also different types of dogs more aggressive coming from overseas being imported.
And so that's when they're big and stocky and have blockheads that if they grab you you're you're done, but we had all these different types of things back then and when you're just blasting people.
They're like, okay, I have to remember to only groom a dog twice twice a month, you know, and then they're forgetting, oh, but I need to look out for this type of body language and then ended up getting hurt or, you know, just getting so stressed with everything that they had to do.
And like, okay, well, I know I have to do this and have to do this now you're telling me I have to put it in a record keeping system as well or file it away and yes, you're correct the retention was not that great.
So moving that into smaller segments over the course of, you know, what we call the probationary period about three months that that ended up being instead of just like, here's all the knowledge you need.
We're going to see if you sink or swim kind of using that period to guide them along a little bit more for close to to almost that whole entire period at least two months.
Yeah, clap here then some practical experience that another class here I think, you know, I had mentioned it maybe earlier maybe a couple days ago I am on boarding current staff right now, but this is something where I don't even let them touch the dogs for the first couple of days like you've got one set task it's clean a kennel properly.
The moment you clean that kennel properly 30 times then you can take your first dog out when you take your first dog out I'm literally going to be right there next to you the whole entire time because I don't want to think bad to happen to that person or to the dog that I'm responsible for.
So just going one step out of time instead of, you know, just do it kind of mentality for them and yeah that has helped definitely I think retain some more people they're not as stressed out mentally with everything that needs to be done.
I feel like a lot of people are coming into the animal care industry are going to be more women young ladies to you know up to middle age there even some older women who are like, oh we'd love to volunteer you know help out.
But they don't realize that these aren't pets again going back to their working dogs so they're not get down in their face and love on them kind of deal there get in my face and I'm going to bite yours kind of dogs half the time.
So with that when you have women who and it's you know a fact we're not as strong as men I can't you know lift all these heavy weights or stop a 115 pound dog from dragging me across a field if he wants to.
So when you have these younger women you do have to be a bit more gentle with them than you know when you're talking about some of the and I said it just a bit earlier as well there was all these men when I first got introduced is why I'm like big burly men you know working these dogs I first started as a 21 year old I know I was intimidated so now it's like hey with these girls we have to be a bit more on the soft side coming into the working dog and.
Working dog industry.
Yeah and that brings up an interesting point because.
Even in the sense of you know there's no doubt once you step in the door you're in the working dog around right not every dog is aggressive or anything like that but.
There's always that chance and it only takes one.
So the word are some things that you've implemented to help safeguard against that you know obviously training.
Right but I know there's some other things that you teach and things that we adhere to in order to help mitigate risk.
Can you kind of touch on those things because I know somebody sitting in the background out on man.
So I want to get into this but yeah what am I going to do when all my staff is getting eight up or you know I want to have these big bad dogs and even now we don't bring in.
And you touched on this we don't bring in half the dogs.
Yeah of that type of dog anymore like you just.
It's not conducive right it's not safe it's just you know works we specialize in these types of dogs but we also have protocols specifically on how to handle these types of dogs now so can you touch on.
That a little bit.
Yeah definitely so again very different from what we used to do but the protocols we have in place now or policies for handling these more aggressive dogs.
One of the things and it it sounds so like unmocho or you know very hands off approach but more risk like avoiding the risk.
So if we've got newer staff or say we've got a young lady who's 110 pounds like soaking wet and extremely petite right we're not going to be like hey can you go walk this 115 pound rot wiler we're going to tell the male kennel tuck that we have go walk the rot wiler so kind of transferring that over to someone who might be better equipped to handle that situation.
And then again in the kennel master course specifically we teach on and then I teach to our kennel tucks anytime we're training new new staff is if you don't know or you can't read the behavior properly or you're just even the slightest bit uncomfortable at this time like you know I've only been here two months I've never handled this type of dog before we're not trying to throw you in off the deep end anymore go get a trainer if I'm not available.
Let's go back to what those protocols wouldn't so you're not throwing you're not throwing these girls into the deep end and pulling say hey you better go get that dog now.
Yeah, no we try and avoid that especially with this the type of people that we're currently employing not saying that there's anything bad about the type of people we have but again that software approach just doing one thing at a time.
The second thing that we kind of do in order to.
Switch that risk over so that we're not having people consistently get up is positive control so one of the main things that we've had problems within the past.
In some cases we do still do it I know that the trainers did it with my dog when he stayed on vacation which is just opening the kennel door and letting the dog out.
If a dog comes back at you or you turn away for a second and you don't have your eyes on that dog and you're maybe a newer employee you're not going to know how or maybe not have the quick response time that's needed to protect yourself from getting eaten up so always have positive control.
Which means putting a collar on the dog and then you know having your leash attached to that collar so that would be the second thing and then I think the third thing.
Let me interject real quick on that second point right.
Because this is what I'm thinking if I'm listening to this right now.
That's great Deb.
But what if I can get the dog in a call it like the dog tries to eat me what I mean what do you do about that.
Definitely so if you have a leash regardless if it's a nylon if it is a leather leash or even a rope leash I've seen them now where they're those tied rope or braided rope you can still have a handle put your clip side through that handle to create a slip and you can slip a dog.
Some versions of this that are used this is the softer version where you don't have any like.
Hard tension in that line it's like the soft slip version of what maybe animal control or the human society might use in the version of a catcher pole.
They use a slip on the end of that pole to keep the dog away from them and we use just that leash and our arms to keep the dogs away from us, but you can still slip the dog in order to keep some type of tension around the neck to keep that dog away from you.
And if that doesn't work or that can't all track can't do that what do we do.
I would then go to moving back to employing the help of the kennel master or we're very lucky at our facility to have a full training staff if even the kennel master's not available or also for some reason I feel uncomfortable employing the help of a trainer.
And I know that has been something that we've had to do in the past with dogs who are just simply too big for even me like I'll take on 115 but not 140 pound master right that is huge head bigger than mine.
And aggressive you know who can cleanly bite through a shovel handle like that's insane to me you grab my arm even though you know I'm the kennel master you're still going to snap my arm because I've got dainty four arms compared to a guy who might have a little bit more bulk talking to him.
That would then still be my result there and then as you kind of mentioned we are we do deal with these types of dogs were last resort or behavior modification.
So if it was ever a case of where the dog was so aggressive that we couldn't be putting a collar on them or a leash on them in any instance.
I believe as well that the trainer who's taking on that dog is also partially responsible because if they know they have a problem they shouldn't be putting my staff unknowingly at risk of going in and trying to put the collar on like they've been taught to do and then not telling them oh hey they're actually here because if you try and put the collar on they're going to eat you up.
So that would be enough of the thing where the communication has to be sound between the divisions.
Yeah that's right and ultimately I mean even with any of this and we said it with quando like you also don't want to.
Make problems worse or make the environment about environment so you're going to have some people was like oh just going then grab this dog and make sure he respects you.
Yeah, but I'm here to be the first to tell you.
Then doesn't work all the time and on top of that you don't want to create a bad experience with the dog and in my belief.
Is the dog is here for short stay.
Yeah in comparison to the rest of his life.
So I don't need to make the dog respect me.
I don't need to make the dog listen to me.
I don't need the dog I just need the dog not to hurt anybody not to hurt itself.
And to enjoy their time.
Here yeah and you know that's another thing in the in the thought process when we look at this and these dogs that need to be bored it.
Nobody else will take them and on top of that we want to create a bad environment form is just not right.
So we have to consider all avenues to include or all perspectives to include the dogs perspective.
Yeah, right through the so he's in a strange place he doesn't know anybody but on top of that we're going to make him listen.
No absolutely not.
We're going to take an approach that makes it as enjoyable as possible.
Keep people safe and make sure that the people handling this dog can actually handle this dog and if not.
We have other forms and methods that we can use to get the dog out and give them some run time give them some exercise without making it a bad experience because we don't want to make the problems worse.
We want to help fix the problems.
Thanks actually.
Yep.
So in a in a brief recap.
The three things that you do to make sure that.
Keep everybody safe and some protocols that you put in place to make that happen because I know we were a little bit long wind it.
But it's chill. Can you break those three out real quick.
Yeah, definitely so transfer your risk to someone else who might be more comfortable more experienced or you know in the case of male versus female more quipped or strong enough to handle a dog of a certain caliber.
Always have positive control that would be the second thing for sure and then the third thing would be then to kind of like you were saying as well use the approach of well if we do have a dog that's aggressive.
We don't have to make them like us so just take a step back.
Make sure that that dog feels comfortable.
We don't have to make that dog feel comfortable with us and start pushing them around and telling them what to do.
So just just take care of the dog if that means the minimum where they're getting their basic needs met there food water elimination of waste and cleaning their kennel.
Then that's good for us to make sure that their healthy during their stay.
Yeah, and you gave your your staff a voice if they don't feel comfortable with that dog because that's a lot of it too when the dog senses that you're not comfortable you're not confident.
You can take advantage of those things too and when your staff approaches a kennel and the dog snarling at the kennel and they don't feel comfortable handling this dog.
Yeah, and make a way.
Consult you and then maybe we get training involved in order to help mitigate any risk of the staff or the dog as well.
Yeah, so that's the I think that's if you don't get anything else out of this podcast take those home and use them because it has made a remarkable difference for us.
And not only staff retention but also workers comp claims as well.
When's the last time you had a kennel.
A claim of workers comp in the kennel.
For the kennel, not sure about training side, but just kennel.
Well, well.
I don't know what you people.
But I believe that it was the beginning, the January, February of 2020 right after we moved to this new facility.
Yeah, and it wasn't even major and I'll say this.
It was violation of which they've been taught.
The pilot of policy that is correct.
was and if they were to follow policy when they've been an issue at all, so it's greatly diminished
accidents for the staff as well, which is really a plus because we're keeping people safer.
And if that jiggle of staff member were to follow positive, positive control with this dog,
and initiate all. Exactly. Again, and that's why we have those policies there. It's just,
again, kennel master, kennel manager kind of deal here is how do you, you have to make sure
you have the right people in there to know, once I've taught you this, it's still going to be enforced
if I'm not around. So that's another thing. Well, yeah, you know, that's always, you know,
one of those things where you try to stress the importance and we do it in training with our handlers
and our trainers. Here's the importance and we teach them our experience, right? And when people take
your kennel master class or they get the opportunity to work under you, they're getting all
this experience, right? The good and the bad experience, right? I've had bad experiences with dogs,
likewise, you have, you've seen bad experiences with staff members that don't listen and
try to do their own thing and end up getting hurt or dogs taking advantage of the situation,
you know, and or even the situations when you kind of push a dog to conform to what you do
and we just seem the bad of that, you know, some of which have been learning from our own experience
and some of which have seen other people's experiences and going, whoa, we don't, no, we don't
need to be doing that, we need to stay away from that. So they get that experience that you're
getting when you're talking about thousands of dogs that you've seen and dealt with and
consulted bets on and things that are at nature. So that's, it's really remarkable to see that
even some small tweaks, three things that we've tweaked have made the biggest differences.
It's just crazy to think that and you always think, why don't we do this earlier?
Because Deb wasn't here earlier. Okay. I really will, you know, when you have somebody that's
dedicated to doing this, somebody that's dedicated to also empowering women to grow within this
industry, like big things happen, right? Yeah. Hey, we go all this up with anybody says a man will
never see it from that perspective. I don't care. You just won't. I have compassion. I have three
girls, people know, you know, obviously have a wife as well. So I'm in a house of women,
but I can never take that perspective wholeheartedly like you can. And so you're the voice,
you're the way that you manipulate things that work for a woman in this industry and I commend you
for that. I absolutely, 100% take 100% credit for that because it's absolutely true.
I take a man's perspective, suck it up and let's go, right? I told you that didn't
need a class and you cried. So that's still been crying. What's that saying now? I might have
been a little bit panicked, but yeah. All right, I'm just joking. You didn't cry, but, you know,
that's that's the man I approach. I could up and go, right? But we haven't taken step back and you
mentioned training and even taking a step back and training and understanding that everything is not
suck it up and go. We got to take perspectives and see it from other people's eyes. And that's
taught us really the most valuable lessons. And even when we're teaching students and mentor
and students, we just had this the last two weeks feeling what student problems, you know, amongst
each other and it comes down to them communicating with each other. And then they come back a week
later and look back and go, man, I learned so much by the simple fact that I just needed to communicate
and it's profound. But yeah, it is really. But, you know, as a kiddle master,
you obviously have a long list of growth and things that you can talk about. But, you know, this
this beyond us, not everything is roses and smells great, right? And the struggle there. So can
you share maybe some struggles that you know, you've had over your time and maybe those are things
that they can learn from and maybe some ways that you've overcome those. You know, speak about
how many you want, you know, if you want to do one or three, a shirt choice.
Only three. I'm just kidding. But, you know, we all learn from struggles where, you know,
nobody's perfect. And, you know, no company is perfect. And we try hard. You know, as a whole as a team,
but, you know, I'll be the first to tell clients, we're not perfect. We try to try our best.
And we have a heart of, you know, trying to do the best. And there's nothing that we take lightly.
We don't just do some things and go, oh well, oh well, it's the way it is or oh well, this, you know,
we really take things to heart. And I know you do too. So yeah. So there you go.
Yep. Well, I think one of the biggest problems was finding that sweet spot to retaining.
People, um, and then accompanying that very closely would be finding the right type of people to
hire into the kennel. Again, I am, again, like you said, all about empowering women, um,
as a woman myself. And quite a young one when I started in a different era of training,
where I grew grew in the company with, you know, suck it up and go with the rest of the guys.
I'm trying to be much more calm, um, but then I also have to say, well, a little bit, you know,
these dogs are dangerous if you don't pick it up fast enough, or can be dangerous if you don't
pick it up fast enough. So those would be two of the problems that were well on our way to fixing,
but then you run into this generation does not want to work. So what I call them out,
this generation is a problem as well. Just finding people to apply. At least, if they do want
to work, they don't want to work in animal care, um, finding people to apply and using, you know,
those avenues. So all three of those kind of clump in together there into the right type of people
retaining them, um, and you know, finding them to hire them in the first place as regards to the
kennel aspect, finding the time to research when I was understaffed in order to benefit the kennel
more. I think it it took roughly six months to go through and create one class for weight management,
which was something we really needed to start implementing back a couple of years ago, and
I could never find the time. I was like, well, I just lost my kennel tech, and that was the only one I
had. So they're going to have to wait. But then we had dogs on trial food, and we had like three
different dogs on three different trial food, and I'm like, this is going to be three months,
and I have to make sure I'm documenting this. So finding the time to research to benefit the
kennel better was extremely hard when the kennel was understaffed because we had the retention
problem. So again, kind of ties all back in together there. When you do find good help,
you're able to complete more as a manager instead of just as another worker who's taking care
and doing what you're supposed to be doing. And then I think one of my personal biggest problems
was finding everything we're talking about hands-on experience, finding all these new
experiences by myself, because I've networked a small amount through social media and talking to
other handlers when I first started to other people who were managing kennels, and I was like,
oh my gosh, they don't look like they're having the problems I'm having, but finding the time to
not do everything myself, even if I was understaffed. So someone was like, hey, we're going to need
you to do this or do that or calling me on my off days, not not realizing how to have an off-slage
so that I didn't burn out. Was extremely hard during the understaffed seasons, but then when we
were staffed, I was like, so happy to get back into the research and the stuff that I really
needed to do for the kennel. So those would be like the major problems there that kind of all
tie back into retention of employees within the kennel setting. So now that that's been fixed,
it's been smooth, smooth, smoother sailing. I wouldn't say smoothest, but smoother sailing for those
problems there for other people to be mindful of, especially if you're a new manager, because I
remember having to make my way up, you know, you're like, you're going to start as a kennel tag
and then you'll be the kennel master, Dezigni, and then when you hit your two year mark, you'll be
the official kennel master due to the experience that you have. And I was like, huh, two years,
I still need more experience, but throughout that whole entire time for the most part, from about
that six to eight month mark, there was a couple of months in there, why was the only person?
And so it's like, kennel master, who I'm the only one here. So that was a very big learning curve
at the beginning there. I remember days and still, taking days in the kennel. You know,
not only does it ground me, but it also keeps me in the loop as to which you deal with on the
day-to-day basis. And I never want to lose that perspective because it's important for all
us to understand. We were joking about it today. My and I about everybody taking someone else's job
for a week, you know, and getting a feeling for what everybody else does because we sometimes lose
perspective, right? So that we can have understanding of what everybody else does. And sometimes just
inherently we lose perspective, like we think that everybody else has it easier, you know,
but everybody plays a function and without that function the team would not operate. And, you know,
I don't ever want to lose that perspective of the kennel or the store or what my ad does or what,
you know, anybody deals with a kennel tech. You know, I want to know and make sure that we always
keep that perspective because I think a lot of leaders lose that perspective of a way they came from.
And when we lose that perspective of where we came from, you know, who are we to sit up on this
high horse and go, hey, just do this or make changes without talking with everybody and getting that input.
And you know, that doesn't just go for our industry. I have an opportunity to talk to many different
people, many different industries from business leaders, to law enforcement, to, you know, higher
to the executive level all the way down to the deputy that, you know, feels like nobody cares about them.
And I don't want us to lose that perspective. And we talk about it as an executive staff and
a executive staff and management staff, like we want everybody to feel like they're never
by themselves or that there's somebody that doesn't care for them. And their manager takes them out
and, you know, gives them, you know, a day a lunch and just tell them that they're appreciated
because they really are. And I never want us to feel like that. I remember years ago someone
telling me, I just, you know, I don't know if you're going to let me go and I'm like, whoa, where's that
coming from? Like you should never work at a company where you got to feel like,
when's my last day of work? And if we're not doing a good enough job to make sure that you're not
feeling that way, like, we're really missing about it. And that's why I love the perspective that
you give from a woman's perspective, go, hey, I've been there. I understand it, like, so let me
come up with ways and training that I can mitigate some of the things that maybe I felt when I was
in your position. And I don't want you to lose that perspective. And I want to encourage others
to special leaders to not lose that perspective. And I really value that. Everybody in the organization
has ideas and has input and has different experiences or different visions or different perspectives.
And we can all learn from. And it's important to have that eye or that ear for that and encourage
that. They'll never be scared to say something. We had a situation not too long ago from one of
the kennel texts. And I won't mention any names. But she was scared to mention some of her personal
feelings. And I'm just like, no, whoa, he's let her know that no, no means like, yeah, this, this
is not right. So we joking we play, but at the end of the day, like, everybody's part of the team.
The end of the day, I really respect it because there's never a time that I worry about the
kennel and the care of the dogs and the treatment of the dogs. And quite frankly, I don't worry
about you. I really don't because I know you got it handled. Anyway, so we got the new respiratory
thing, Dev, that like, it's been like very hot topic. I know we've gotten a couple of clients that
have reached out to us and said, hey, what is, what is this? Should I be worried? You know, what
does it look like in your kennel? Like we've had some that have asked that. You know, we never know
what is going to come about, right? When we first started dealing with the federal government
on some other contracts, like they wanted these theft and these names done, like there was a
old, let's just stuff that we had to put together to try to make this happen. That was vastly
different than what we were used to because of the amount of money and resources they had,
that they could do all these things on site. But this new respiratory disease that's kind of
circulating right now, as we know, we never know what's going to, what's new out on the horizon or
whatnot. So in the kennel, how do you make sure that your staff was prepared for these new things?
And how do you stay on top of these potential outbreaks and things that are out of the
future from the kennel perspective? How do you stay on top of those things?
Yeah, so we do have all of our policies still in place for proper procedures for sanitation and
cleaning. So those aren't going to change any. Basically, all of our policies that we have
at the kennel, we already have sanitation protocols, we already have how to clean a kennel,
so our cross contamination protocols between the different kennels are not going to change.
We're not going to add even more disinfectants and make things super hard. The disinfectants we have
are kennel safe and actually approved by one of our long-standing veterinarians that we work with.
So we're not changing that anytime soon. It's like when people were like,
fried with COVID, bleach takes care of COVID if you have it in the right ratio. Okay, so don't
freak out and start doing all this extra unnecessary stuff. So we kept all of our cleaning
protocols and sanitation protocols the same, but we do have to be a bit more vigilant. So our
veterinarian told us on one of our last visits that this is just like Portitella, but it's the
killer version. All the same signs and symptoms you're looking out for, but once you take your dog
in for treatment, you know, they're showing more dangerous symptoms signs that can actually end in
well instead of my dog just needing like a breathing treatment. Now they're in the K9 emergency room,
or ICU getting 24-7 care because it's, you know, they could stop breathing in the middle of the night.
So same signs and symptoms just exacerbated to be to a point where it could harm them for more than
just a couple of weeks. It could kill them. So what we're looking out for is all those same signs and
symptoms of penal cough, Portitella, in any of the dogs who are coming to our facility and, you know,
we tell it to the students when they're going out places, especially when their dogs get released to them,
don't take them to dog parks. When I'm traveling, when we're transporting dogs, I like to go somewhere
where it's lit up, but I still won't take a dog into like the gas station, like dog parks that they
have on the highways. So we don't know how they're cleaning. We don't know the other dogs that have been
there, steer clear from areas that could potentially harbor that respiratory thing. Because I mean,
if we're thinking about it in the span of like two months, it went from Oregon on the other side of the
US down to this side because it was just traveling with people across those roads in highways. So we're
looking out for those signs and symptoms and then staying away from risky places and we always
urge our clients like if they feel uncomfortable bringing their dog in for boarding, get them an
extra board of Tela Shaw as some extra coverage. They have six month boosters. They also have
a canine influenza, which is another respiratory shot vaccine that you can get for dogs. Just give
them a full rounded coverage there before you bring them in for your piece of mind. But we're never
going to skimp on our procedures and policies that we have in place and we're not going to put
your dog at risk. If we say, hey, we have a dog who's coughing like we're quarantining them off or
we're quarantining our kennel, like you can't come in. We're not going to put other people's dogs
at risk just because we might need $40 a night to have a dog board with us. So that's kind of what
we tell clients when they ask about this. Unfortunately, according to the research right now,
there's not much else they can do to really stop the spread of it. Just treating it as if it's a
more dangerous version of Borta Tela. Yeah, that's one of the vaccination protocols are so intense.
Yeah, our facility and there's nobody coming into the facility without full vaccination,
and even students or running cert the dogs have to be fully vaccinated before coming in.
Sometimes clients get irritated at times with the way that we require them and we require
vaccinations from a vet from any handwritten or, hey, I got the file. I understand that.
But for our piece of mind, I'm sure that the vet's and I think you found one time. Yeah,
we're somebody trying to trace the situation. Yeah, you actually called the vet and the vet was
like absolutely not. We did not give these vaccinations. Yeah, the vet was like, we're seeking
legal action against this person for forging records in the past to other companies. So
I'm using the same signature and scans and stuff. So that was a crazy situation. And I think I
have in the past, a lot of people are like, Deb, you're a mother, a mother, hand. They're
have been at least two people who are like, at first, when you were like, oh, we have to have
them directly from the vet and we're like, oh, but, you know, we're not doing anything. You offended
us by saying, well, if you don't give me the copies, I'm going to have to call your vet. And they
got offended by that. I'm like, this is for the safety of all the dogs inside the kennel. You know,
I always refer to it as my kennel. Like, this is my kennel. Your dog's not a part of my kennel yet.
So I don't care what you're doing. My dogs need to stay safe. So I'm going to call them. And then
once they realize, you know, we do this for everyone, not just targeting one specific person,
those those records and those medical vaccines have to come from a vet as well. Like, we don't
take self-giving vaccines, but also we have to have that record directly from the vet because
unfortunately, people in the past have proven to be untruthful. So that's something we just have to
ensure everyone's staying safe. Well, you know, on top of that, right, if my siblings are dogs to
us, at least she knows that we've taken the steps to ensure as much as we can in all possibilities
that her dogs are going to be healthy or at least be around other healthy dogs that we know,
right, my 100%. I mean, one of the reasons that I actually, I was bringing Dottie my dog for training
before I ever boarded what CCU, but one of the main reasons that I felt comfortable
bringing them to training was because before my dog ever set foot on property, I had to make sure
that my vet sent over all of her vaccination records. So that way, they could make sure not only
where the dogs they're safe, but I also interpreted as keeping my dog safe. But, you know, it keeps
my dog safe and it keeps all of the other dogs safe, who are eventually going to have an incredibly
important job, but that's a detection, patrol tracking, a service dog. So yeah, 100%. It is, it makes
me way more comfortable than paying the same amount really for somewhere that doesn't require
those vaccines for a fraction of the care that I've seen just in the kennel that the technicians
and that provide. Yeah, you know, the crazy thing is is from the client side of it, I deal with a lot
of that. We had a lady that says she owns the kennel and says she wanted to bring her dogs for training,
but she administers all her own vaccines and all that and, you know, I told her,
you know, I'm not saying you don't, right? You very much could. Just like we could very much
give our own vaccines. But the reasons why we don't is because of the optics, right? As an example,
I'll give you this example. Now it's my word that we gave vaccines appropriately and
remember I'm trying to protect our best interest in the eyes of someone else. But when I go to a
third party like a vet and we pay exorbit amounts of money, but we do it because now we have a third
party that says that our dogs were vaccinated. We did this, this and this on the medical exams,
it's not us doing it. Could we hire a vet tech? Could we give a vast amount of the vaccinations that
we are required to give ourselves and save some money? Absolutely. But I think it saves us more by paying
a little bit more because of the optics and because of the assurance that things are done correctly,
versus during on myself, but she could not understand why we require the vet to give them even
though she'd give them herself. And you know, she took it as an attack on her and oh, you don't trust
me by no means in my saying that. But what I am saying is there's other clients that trust us
do the right thing. And that being said, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to pass on the
three or five thousand dollars that we're going to make on training from you to ensure that our
clients are rest assured that every single dog we know has received the vaccinations,
at least because we're getting them from a board certified veterinarian that says that they have
administered. Those vaccinations to that dog and we won't bury on that. We just want,
but I think I think it's the best call absolutely 100%. One of the most important roles that the
kiddo master and dev obviously plays is just ensuring that no matter what age that dog is or the
puppy is or whatever, not only are they receiving superb treatment. And I can say that honestly as
a self-proclaimed dog mom, even though everyone at the facility hates that term, but I'm going to say
it. Like, you know, I love my dogs, right? They're my little babies. I would never leave them
somewhere. I felt was unclean or unsafe or they weren't going to be treated right. And I see
just as an observer. I see how they treat the dogs and the kennels. I see how they treat the
kennels cleaning with care. Each dog has treated individually and I could just go on.
Well, the thing is, you know, it's hard to say those things because, but people don't see what
goes on in the background. Yeah. And, you know, on top of that, I'll reiterate this, we're not perfect
by anything. But the effort like that goes into it. And you can't guarantee everything that's
going to go right. Whenever we put people's hands involved in things, there's it's inevitable
something's going to break. But the care, the, and I say that because of the heart for everything
of the dog, they keep their dog as safe as possible. And, you know, and the protocols that are
set out or set out for those purposes, 100% is to keep the dog as safe as possible. And that's
from vaccination is to cleaning, to sanitation, to staff training. I mean, the amount of hours that
you spend training a staff like one people take, this is really crazy. It takes us a lot longer.
You know, but I can never call a client and say their dog got sick at our kennel because of the
lack of sanitation. Yeah. And I just, I just want to feel right doing that. But I get it. Well,
I think we'll wander down, Deb, like we got to spend together. And that's remarkable. I appreciate
the time. I, I hope that somebody learned one thing from this and one thing that they'll let
out from you. There's a wealth of knowledge that you have. And the amount of information you can
teach somebody is just remarkable. And so I hope everybody enjoyed this podcast. Remember,
Tuesdays and Fridays, we release our podcast on every network, which can release a podcast,
including YouTube. But our short sets are on Tuesday and our long episodes are on Friday.
Why do we do that? Let me tell you. Let me give you some insight because on Tuesdays and Fridays,
we groom every single dog. I appreciate everybody listening and I'm excited to see what 2020,
24 brings and we're leading off with some heavy hitters already in 2024 and Deb, a Clark,
being one of them sharing her knowledge of her kennel and how it runs and some of the insights
on what goes on in the background. I appreciate it, Deb. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.