Some folks were hesitant about doing the training online at first. But I will say this: our mission to help people and their dogs has seen us through even the hardest days. We’ve all suffered in some way, even if only from the isolation and the drudgery of it. Another dear friend in the dog community has permanent complications. My niece, an intensive care nurse, got a bad case of Covid and spent a night in the hospital herself (she’s recovered). As the months added up, so too did the friends, clients, and colleagues who fell ill. I won’t say that the pandemic has been a good thing for any of us. The Association of Professional Dog Trainers (APDT) and The Pet Professional Guild (PPG) followed with similar efforts. The International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC) launched a campaign to provide behavior consultants with useful resources for making the transition to online work. We’ve helped families with their dogs in Austin, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle, Rural Missouri, Suburban Washington D.C., and more. But, our service area quickly became all of Southeast Texas and beyond.
As of this writing we’ve done over a thousand Zoom consultations and resolved scores of complicated cases start-to-finish. Victoria and I literally transitioned to doing them exclusively overnight. I’d done online dog behavior consolations before. KTRH News Story: Dog Training As a Small Business – Reimagined Our mission is to help people who are suffering with their dogs. And we started using Zoom for Live Video Consultations.Īll the while, there was a voice in my heart (perhaps it was Dad) leading us back again and again to our core values. We launched online classes, including Puppy Socialization in a Time of Social Distancing and a prep course for clients working with aggressive dogs. So, Victoria and I worked on the business and we worked hard – trying out ideas, taking on projects, pushing the company hard into the waves that Jack Baugh 1924-2014
I told her that my dad had taught me that when the business is slow you work on the business. Victoria Thibodeaux had joined me in the group in January. I pulled from memories and stories he shared through the years looking for inspiration – for advice – for answers.
And, in those early days of April 2020 I missed him desperately.
He was a child of the depression who reinvented himself more times than I can count – from hard times to good times to the best of times. In other words, it’s potentially dangerous work. It’s house-to-house work, in the living room work, passing treats and handing off the leash work. Could we keep it afloat, period? Were we built to survive a pandemic? After all, in-home dog training and behavior consulting is close-contact work. A week later my partner, Tim, and I had a hard talk about how long we could keep Michael’s Dogs afloat. I saw my last in-person client on March 18th 2020.
0 kommentar(er)
