Dogs, Trauma, and Both Ends of the Leash with Patricia McConnell PhD at Bark! Fest
Watch the recording of the panel at Bark! Fest, the book festival for animal lovers, with Patricia McConnell PhD talking about The Education of Will.
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| Zazie Todd PhD, Kristi Benson, and Patricia McConnell PhD chat at Bark! Fest 2024 and hold up the books. |
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Here is the first of the recordings from Bark! Fest, which I know many people are waiting for...
Bark! Fest with Patricia McConnell PhD
Bark! Fest, the book festival for animal lovers, took place in September 2024 with 11 author panels (and one tricks class from the amazing Erica Beckwith of A Matter of Manners Dog Training). It was organized to celebrate the launch of my new book, Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, which is out now and available from all good bookstores.
This session, with Patricia McConnell PhD talking about The Education of Will, was full. And it was absolutely wonderful. I am pleased to share the recording here for those of you who missed it, because I know you are going to love it.
You can watch the recording on Youtube or below, and listen to The Pawsitive Post in Conversation wherever you get your podcasts or below.
We talked about:
- being gracious and welcoming with human clients
- why Dr. McConnell chose to write about the human side of the leash
- change for the better in the field of dog training
- why Dr. McConnell wrote The Education of Will and the process of writing it
- the main canine theme in the book
As well, Dr. McConnell answered questions from the audience.
Dr. McConnell mentions several books in the conversation. They are:
- After Silence by Nancy Venable Raine
- Good Morning, I Love You by Shauna Shapiro
- Unlearn Your Pain by MD Howard Schubiner
The books from Bark! Fest are available from all good bookstores, including from Bookshop (which supports independent bookstores), UK Bookshop, and my Amazon store.
Many thanks to everyone who came to Bark! Fest and made it such a wonderful event, and special thanks to Patricia McConnell PhD for this beautiful discussion.
Highlights of the conversation with Patricia McConnell, PhD
Z: So for many years, you helped clients with their dogs. What did you like about working with people whose dogs have serious behavior issues?
P: Wow. People. I mean, really? My two favorite species are dogs and people. I just, I love people... I don't love all people. There is some discernment. But I'm just fascinated by us. And I'm fascinated by us as an animal behaviorist and a zoologist and a learner about primate behavior.
There are just so many people who love their dogs so, so much and were so desperate for help, for knowledge, support, and I loved working with people.
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| Pre-order Away to Me by Patricia McConnell |
I did get, after about 25, six years, I did get tired. I did get like, oh, I don't know if I can keep doing this because it's, you know, most animal behaviorists see people with really serious behavioral problems. And there were so many tears and so many arguments between husbands and wives in my office that I got that, you know, it was my job to help monitor and help through.
It's very hard work. So I did get tired of it after a while and wanted to go on to do other things. But I love helping people and I love working with people. They're just fascinating. Even if they drive you crazy, they're interesting. We're never boring.
K: That actually slides just perfectly well into our next question, which is about your approach to working with people with your human clients.
So from what I read, you have this really gracious and warm approach to human clients, which I think is lovely. And I don't think it's necessarily, you know, I don't think that necessarily has always been the case when it comes to, like, the dog training world. But I think, you know, things are changing in the last decade or two.
So what led you to try and see your human clients as both interesting animals? When I read your books, I think that I learned a little bit about people, you know, like about our evolutionary history, which is fascinating to me. But also, it's almost like you approach people as kin. You know, they're in need, they need my help. So what led you to that approach?
P: You know, it was being at the university. I had gone back as an adult to study Zoology after just doing this and that, and this and that, sort of all over the map. And I always loved animals, and it never occurred to me until late in life that I could somehow make a living working with them. Until I met some animal behaviorists at the Animal Behavior Society conference.
And I was like, wait, I could study animal behavior, I could work on animal behavior, not have to be in Africa and leave my family.
So I took all these courses on animal behavior and a lot of primate behavior. I actually worked with primates. Fascinating, wonderful, little, small South American primates. And so I started to see us as another primate species.
And for a lark, I volunteered for dog training classes. And I started to see. I was watching all these chimpanzee videos, and I started to see all these comparisons and similarities between the way chimpanzees behaved and the way humans behaved in these classes.
That's just really what started out The Other End of the Leash is like, wait, we have evolutionary history, we have evolutionary resources and baggage. Dogs have evolutionary history. Some of it obviously combines incredibly well because our relationship is just a biological miracle, but it doesn't always mesh in so well.
So I remember being appalled at myself during a conference. I was giving a presentation. It was sort of early, Other End of the Leash, and I was giving a presentation on how chimps and people are alike. So I had videos of chimps doing things, and then people doing the same things, sort of repeating themselves. Sit, sit, sit, sit. You know, chimps repeating themselves.
And so I showed a video of bonobos having sex, and halfway through, I'm talking to like 400 people. I realized, like, if I'm making a comparison, I'm actually showing **** and I should be arrested. Some older people might remember that. It was the Chicago APDT conference.
Anyway, so that's a longer answer than you probably expected, but way better than expected.
Z: Yes. So maybe not that lecture, but, you know, certainly when I was younger and studying Psychology, I was in a different country, but I wish I could have been to some of your lectures and your teaching. Because it must have been amazing.
P: We would have had such fun together, you and me.
Z: I think so. And so The Other End of the Leash, you said, that's how you came to come up with the idea. But it's published in 13 different languages. It's a classic of the dog training literature. So many people have found it useful thinking not just about chimps, but also about people and dogs. What made you decide to focus on the human side of the leash?
P: Yeah, it was because that was the side that wasn't being focused on at all at the time. I mean, that things really have changed a lot. But at the time, nobody really talked about our behavior. You know, we were taught. I mean, when I started doing this, it was when I first got into it, it was all about punishment. It was all about dominance.
And I started watching, learning about primate behavior and thinking about us as this primate species and watching how people behaved.
It was just so blindingly obvious that a huge part of what was going on had nothing to do. Well, obviously had something to do with the dog. But what was being missed was the human behavior and why the humans were behaving that way.
Why do we repeat ourselves all the time? You know, why would you put a long vine like thing in our hand? Why do we not be able to not jerk it without training ourselves?
So I just felt like that wasn't being addressed and that that was such an important part because training in my mind shouldn't be. And now this is a very common perspective now. But it wasn't then.
It was all about shock collars and prong collars and dominance and. And it just, you know, to me, this supposed to be a partnership, right? And so what is one partner doing?
Anyway, you get the idea. That was the piece that was missing that was really, really important.
K: So considering you have this view of humans as primates, which we are, in view of dogs as dogs, and you're studying this from a behavior component and, you know, evolutionary component. I wanted to ask you, what's your favorite way that human and dogs are the same? And what's your favorite way that we're different?
P: Oh, that's fun. My quick answers are coming right away. So, play. If you study animal behavior in general. And by the way, anybody who's really seriously in the weeds with dog training, study animal behavior in general because there's so much there, and it gave me so much perspective, and it made me such a better behaviorist, such a better trainer, such a better dog, human, you know.
So it turns out that play in adults, in mammals is really rare. It's very, very rare. And the fact that dogs are so playful as adults and humans are so playful as adults, there's no question it's part of our bond, and it's part of what makes this biological miracle of our relationship between them.
So that's without question my favorite part. I mean, there's little that makes me happier than either playing with my dogs or watching my dogs play.
And then I think, to me, the thing that stands out most as what makes us most different is scent, is the whole focus on smell. Primates are not famous for a great sense of smell, although, if you read my books and a lot of other books out there, we are better at scent detection than we think we are often unconsciously able.
One of the great studies, I quote it in I think For the Love of a Dog is how if you give mothers T shirts from a newborn or blankets from a newborn,10 different ones and one is theirs, and you ask them which is your baby? To a person, they say, I don't know, I can't tell. But they're usually right when they're forced to guess or encouraged to guess.
So we're a little better than we tend to think. But we don't focus on it. We don't think about it. And I think that's actually been a problem with a lot of human dog relationships, because there's a lot of confusion there. I think there are all kinds of things that interest dogs, upset dogs.
Just the fact that people want to go on a walk and dogs want to go on a sniff. I mean, just right there. How many behavioral problems of companion dogs are out there? Right. I don't even know. They're not polite on a leash. They don't walk by my side.
Well, why would they walk by your side? Dogs don't do that. So I think that's the biggest difference.
Z: And you've alluded to some of the ways that there's been change in the dog training and behavior field already, because you've talked about how in the past, there were a lot more prongs. And you've also talked about changes in thinking about the human side of the leash. And there's been a ton of other changes as well.
So what do you think over the years in which you've been working? What do you think is the biggest change for the better in dog training and behavior?
P: Oh, there are so many. And I mean, there's so many great people out there doing so many wonderful things that have been for so many years. I mean, just think about Karen Pryor's work, starting with dolphins, and then Don't Shoot the Dog. You know, how many decades ago was that? I stand on her shoulders, you know, so much great work out there.
But I think, you could say the perspective of encouragement for positive reinforcement.
But I think the bigger picture, I think the bigger umbrella is being empathetic to dogs. It's thinking of dogs as dogs, putting your head in a dog's mind perspective framework as best you can.
And of course, we can be problematically anthropomorphic and pretend like they're little children when they're not, but we have a lot of similarities. We're very similar mammals in many, many ways. Our emotional systems aren't all that different.
So if you look at sort of the big picture, I think a lot of what's most heartening to me is that people are starting to think about dogs not as objects or possessions or things you have to dominate, but whether it's friends or family members. But mostly they're dogs. They're individual, sentient creatures who are a different species than we are, who share some things.
I mean, just the questions you guys are asking, you know, we share some things and we're really different in some ways. And I think that big umbrella perspective is so important and has done so much good.
We have a very long way to go. Very, very long way to go. Right now my area, which started in the 80s when I first got involved, was super dominance oriented, and then did a big switch. Madison, Wisconsin, very liberal city in the Midwest. And now there's a big switch. You go online, lots and lots of electric collars, lots of send your dog to us for two weeks. And the electric collar is $500 extra.
So we got a lot of work to do. But I think it's very heartening how far we've come.
K: Yeah, absolutely. When you started to write the text that ultimately became The Education of Will, you weren't planning on it becoming a book. So why did you start to write it?
P: Oh, it was not a book. It was therapy. I was in a situation where I was forced to deal with a lot of the things that had happened in my past that had huge influence on my life, and not particularly in a good way.
And so I was seeing a great therapist, Ann Simon Wolf, here in Madison, and I just started journaling and writing things down. And then I also started reading there's a book called After Silence by Nancy Venable Raines, about trauma that had a huge influence on me. And I literally remember thinking, I closed it. I cried, but I closed the covers and I thought, if I turn my journals into a book and it helped one person, and I literally thought this. If it helped one person as much as this book meant to me and helped me, then it's worth it.
So, yeah, that was what started it.
Z: And I think it's helped so many people not only thinking about their own trauma, but also thinking about dogs because of the way that you weave stories together.
So at what point did you decide that this should be a memoir? So you said you realized if it would help one person, but was that a sudden realization or did you have a gradual process of thinking about it and wondering if this was what you wanted to do or how did happen?
P: It was an abrupt thought of like, oh, wait, what if, like Nancy Venable Raines? You know, what if I turn my experiences into a memoir? So that was very abrupt. But then I thought about it for a long time and I will not pretend , it was not easy writing. Part of it was very difficult to write.
There were times where facing it felt like it sort of set me back a little bit. And I think everybody needs to be aware of that if you're dealing with really deep seated trauma. As one of my therapists said, there's a reason we repress things.
But I love to write. You know, I just, I love to write too. As I was writing in my journal and then I kept reading and I started writing some about it. I love to write.
And the other thing that really happened that hit hard was that the dog I had, Willie, who came as an eight week old puppy, as if he'd been traumatized. I have no idea what would have happened to him. Not a clue. But he behaved as though he'd been horrifically traumatized by other dogs.
So I sort of figured out that he was behaving a lot like I was behaving in many ways and we were not actually helping each other. And so then I got really like, okay, I need to figure this out. I need to help me. I need to help this dog. And maybe if I wrote about it would help both species.
K: I think that really leads us again into the next question because it is about dog trauma. And like Zazie, I found it really compelling and heavy. It was a heavy book to read because of [the subject matter], but I liked how it sort of went back and forth between your life and your dogs life and how you were helping dogs and how you were helping yourself. But it got heavier and heavier, heavier and then it was like lighter at the end.
So it's not just a memoir about you. There's a lot of information about dogs and about Will in particular and about trauma in dogs. So what's this? The central canine theme of the book isn't like, what does the book tell us about dogs?
P: Yeah, I think it's in the title actually, in a way, because The Education of Will has several different meanings. So one, it's about helping my very messed up, super dog dog, aggressive dog Willie, about helping him and how to quote, educate, work with him, rehab him so that he was less nervous and frightful and not dangerous, although he never hurt anybody or anything, but he looked like he might.
But I think the main point of the title, The Education of Will is that what I learned in this process is that willpower alone cannot fix deep seated trauma. And that was really hard for me because I was like, I can deal with this. I'm good. I'm good. Everybody imagines being that there's a man behind them with a baseball bat about to smash their head into a piece of mush, you know, and I mean, I lived with that for years and I literally thought everybody felt like that.
But the fact is that dogs are so, you know, mammals can be so easily traumatized. And for us to understand that what we see is aggression or misbehavior or being a jerk, you know, that so much of that is an animal who doesn't have a lot of choices who is acting out of this deep seated trauma and that desperately needs our help.
So that's a lot of what drove that. Wanting people to understand that dogs too can be traumatized. Horses can be traumatized, cats can be traumatized, et cetera. Birds probably can be very badly traumatized, even though their brains are really, really different. But that was really the driving force.
You know, all of my books have been, if you think about it, comparing humans and dogs, you know, The Other End of the Leash is about sort of behavior as primates.
For the Love of a Dog is comparing emotions of people and dogs. What's the same? What's different? Education of Will is just narrowing down a little bit more, now it's comparing trauma and how to heal in both species.
And obviously the way you heal that in people is often different in some ways. In some ways it's easier for us, and in some ways it's harder for us. But basically those things need to be acknowledged and understood.
Z: Yeah. And I think we're so lucky that you decided to write about this and to write The Education of Will. And it is, as Kristi said, it is heavy in parts, and I think it helps people to know that, but it's also very uplifting and tremendously beautiful by the end and so helpful to people, I think.
And because this is a literary festival, we've got some questions about publishing and book writing that we want to ask you. So The Education of Will is traditionally published. Some of your dog behavior books are self published. So what are your thoughts on picking one particular route or the other for a specific book?
P: Boy, it's an interesting issue for any author to think about. So traditional publishing, usually a publisher, maybe one of the big five, are in New York City. The advantages there are, first of all, you usually get an advance. It might not be very big, but it might be a lot.
They have so many distribution avenues that nobody else has. They're the ones who can get your book in the front of Barnes and Noble, you know, so distribution is huge.
And the other really big one is that you've got a bank of resources from, hopefully a great editor who works with you, becomes your partner, makes your book better and better and better. And then there's an art department that designs a great cover. There might be a marketing PR department, although we're expected to do more and more and more of that by ourselves.
So that's sort of the quick summary of traditional publishing.
Self publishing, the advantage of that is you have control, which you don't with big publishers. I actually had, oh, I had a really hard time. The Other End of the Leash originally had a cover that I thought was so horrible that I literally told the editor, if this is the cover of my book, I won't be in the same room with it. And I had to fight and fight and fight to get the cover I got.
So if you're self publishing, you have control. You have to find the artist, you have to do it yourself. So that's great.
Timing is better. If you're self publishing, timing is way better. So New York publishers, traditional publishers now, one and a half to two years from when you sign a contract. One and a half to two years, that's long. Self publishing, you can get it out a lot faster, but you don't have the distribution channels. You have to pay for everything yourself.
I do want to mention there's something that's getting more and more attention that's really interesting that I think a lot of listeners should pay attention to if they're a writer. It's called hybrid publishing.
And I almost signed with a hybrid publisher, Little Creek Press, who's in Wisconsin, not far away from me. So it's self publishing in that you pay them. They don't pay you, you pay them. However, it's traditional in that they don't just publish anything you send to them because you pay them money. They're very discerning. They only take a certain number of books.
They don't have the same distribution as a big New York publisher. They have a lot more than you do. So if somebody's interested, check out hybrid publishing. There are a lot more options now than there used to be and it's really fun and interesting.
K: So, continuing in the book vein, we've heard you have exciting news about a new book which I didn't even know about until I read these questions. So I'm very excited to hear that. Can you tell us about it?
P: I sure can. I don't know how much I can tell you. I can tell you that I did sign with a traditional publisher. I can tell you that the timeline is incredibly slow.
I finished my novel last mid January. It was done, finally got to a publisher in June. I have a publisher, Kensington Press, which is a New York press. They're not one of the big five, Simon and Schuster Random House. However, they're very well respected publisher of mysteries and thrillers.
And for the second time only, I'm about to talk to my editor as soon as this is over. I can't wait.
So all I can tell you is that hopefully the plan is that it will come out in February or March or February 2026, which feels, wow, so far away.
Some people have actually asked me, are there dogs in it? And I just like, yeah. Can you imagine the hate mail you'd get if there were no dogs?
And I'll answer the second question. No, there is no dog who dies. I will tell you that people do, but no dogs die.
Z: If you're meeting with your editor after this, you can tell them that there are hundreds of people at this live event who are going to be on tenterhooks until 2026 waiting this book and we can't wait to read it.
P: Oh, I can't wait for it to be out. Oh, and I have started a second one, by the way. I have a plot, I have a narrative, I have new characters. I mean, it's going to be a series with the same protagonist and the same dogs, by the way, but obviously different plot and a different mystery. I'm on chapter two of the next book already. So.
Z: Awesome. I'm so thrilled to hear this news. What made you decide to take the switch to writing a novel?
P: As I said, I love writing. I'm a reader. I'm just a voracious reader. I'm hungry all the time. I'm one of those people who has way too many books that she doesn't have time to read.
I love good writing, you know, and it's partly my dad loved good, beautiful writing, and he was such a great dad in that sense. He would go to the library and go, like, I think you're ready for this book. You know, he loved beautiful writing. My sister, who's deceased, Wendy Barker, was one of the finest American poets around.
And so I sort of have a family history of writing, but I love writing. I think I also felt when I retired from seeing clients, I was like, well, I want to do something that's really fun but still involves dogs and people.
So I had a scene in my mind for years, probably 10 years, I've had a scene that starts at a sheepdog trial. I will tell you that the book starts at a sheepdog trial. Something happens. Something happens at a sheepdog trial.
And I've had this scene in there for, like 10 years. And anyway, I just find all those things sort of came together and it's been very hard. Fiction is so much harder than nonfiction, but because anything can happen, which is wonderful, except that means that you finish one sentence and then anything could happen. Anything. Anything. Right?
So you have to make constant decisions about so many different things. But anyway, I just love it. I love doing it. And it kept me, I have to tell you, it kept me partially sane during the pandemic. During the worst of it, I couldn't write at all. And when things got a little better, it sort of kept me sane.
And then I got sick. I had a bunch of medical adventures that I still have many of. You know, I can sit at a computer for two hours and write, without compromising anything. So a bunch of factors came together at the same time.
K: You've written a bunch of different types of books. You've written nonfiction about dogs, a literary memoir, and now fiction. Very exciting. So how has your writing process changed? Zazie and I adore hearing about how people write. You know, from I sit at my desk to here's what I'm thinking. Tell us your process. We're curious.
P: I will. I'll tell you what's changed first. And I'll tell you my process. So what's changed is that more and more and more I'm focusing on the craft of writing, and that makes sense because when nonfiction, you want to write really, really well, and I hope I have. But there's certain factual information you want to impart. With fiction, you're just telling a story. And so the craft of writing and the way to do that.
And I've taken very few writing classes. I've actually taken one writing class in my whole life. I mean, I've read a ton of books and I'm starting to go to writing seminars.
And the craft of writing is more and more and more just fascinating me, you know. What makes a story something you can't put down? What makes a character that you believe? Why did you use that word instead of this word?
More and more and more, I'm just having a great time with that and, and understanding how I can use that to reach a whole new group of people outside of the dog training world who still love dogs and who can learn a lot again.
I mean, it's a murder mystery. So there's adventure and drama and some drama in there. And so there's just a lot to be learned about both dogs and people, I would like to think, while being entertained.
K: I feel like hearing you say that, I feel like it sort of twigged. Because I reread The Other End of the Leash. And then I listened to The Education of Will in preparation for this conversation. And I feel like when I was listening to the Education of Will, there's a lot more picture painting in my mind from your words. You know, like a sound is described in a particular way that's very evocative.
So I feel like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, just from reading your stuff.
P: Thank you. Music to an author's ears. Music to my ears. Thank you. Thank you.
Z: Yeah, absolutely. I would second that. It's absolutely beautifully written.
This interview has been lightly edited for content and style.
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