164. K. Holden Svirsky, CTC, CSAT 

[0:05]  COLLEEN PELAR

Welcome to Unleashed at Work and Home. I'm Colleen Pelar, and this is where pet professionals come for honest conversations about what it really takes to show up for yourself while serving the animals you love. If you've ever felt caught between compassion and exhaustion, you're in the right place. Here we explore what it means to reconnect with your inner wisdom and rediscover the joy that brought you to this work. Make sure to join my email community at colleenpelar.com for gentle, practical insights designed specifically for pet professionals. Now let's dive in.

[0:43]  COLLEEN PELAR

Welcome back to Unleashed at Work and Home. My guest today is Holden Svirsky, and she's a dog trainer who has so many specializations. I say "Svirsky" with a nice American accent, and I would love for you to hear how it's supposed to be said. So Holden, could you please tell me how we say your name?

[1:05]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

[Demonstrates correct pronunciation.] Isn't that cool?

[1:09]  COLLEEN PELAR

My tongue doesn't quite do that, but I think it's super cool. So hi — tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

[1:14]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Well, I've been in this field now for about nine years. And I think maybe like most people — I don't know if it is most people, and who knows what the actual numbers are — but I got started working with animals as a volunteer in a shelter. I had adopted a dog, and I had been laid off during a recession in '08, and thought that it was time to fill up my day with something productive. And so found myself going back to where I had adopted my dog from so that I could give back a little bit. And became just quite lit up by everything that was going on. I was extremely lucky to have, early on, met some very knowledgeable people who were at that time already employing some of what were then kind of cutting edge techniques in terms of animal management, training, welfare, enrichment, all of those things. So I was super lucky to have been exposed to that quite early, and fell in love with the work.

[2:10]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

A full-time position opened up at that shelter, and I thought, hey, this is meant to be for some reason or another. It did feel a little bit like a calling. I remember actually saying that in my interview, which may have worked out well for me at the time. So I became an adoption counselor and did that for a number of years. That shelter was then merged with the San Francisco SPCA, so I began working for them again as an adoption counselor, and that is where I met some of the folks working in the behavior department and started to learn more about animal behavior — which did take me back to some of the work I had done with humans during my undergraduate and graduate work, way back, long time ago. I realized how much I sort of already knew, just didn't think to apply it to companion animals. So there was some unlearning and relearning, but learning theory was familiar to me, and so I found that it was just a really great fit.

[3:20]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

So I worked in shelters — a number of shelters — for the better part of a decade. I've done almost every job in a shelter at some point. From cleaning kennels to enrichment, to training volunteers, to intake — including driving a big box truck all over the state of California. I've been to, I think, almost every municipal shelter in California at some point, especially in the Central Valley, but also further north. So I've seen quite a spectrum of what that looks like and what resources are available or unavailable. And then in 2019 I opened up my own consulting business. After receiving a number of certifications, that seemed like the best next step for me, and I've been doing that now for almost seven years.

[5:23]  COLLEEN PELAR

Thank you. I love that. And a question I always love to ask people is: what did you think you were going to be when you grew up? Like, when you were 10, what did you think? Because you had a whole career — 2008 was a shift point. But what was it you thought, and what did you actually do?

[5:45]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Yeah, I wasn't the kid who wanted to be a veterinarian. I always had pets, but no. I think at some point I wanted to be a ballerina. I do still consider myself an artist. I write and paint. So while behavior consulting is my quote-unquote day job, I have a number of occupations. We'll call it.

[6:28]  COLLEEN PELAR

That's kind of awesome. I'm pretty sure it's Liz Gilbert — I might be wrong — who said that she promised her creative side that it would never have to support her, that she would work to support her creative side, and that it would allow the creative side to thrive and grow. And so being able to paint or dance or write or whatever — we don't always have to have that be the thing that fills the refrigerator. So that seems fair.

[7:05]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Potentially. When it does, it becomes less of a passion for you. And I also sometimes find that having other occupations and things that I do with my time keeps me passionate about the work that I do, even though yes, it is technically required to pay my bills. Having my hands in sort of multiple fields is important so that this work just doesn't become drudgery all of the time.

[7:58]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah, I think that's really important. So what did you get a degree in, and what did you do until 2008?

[8:07]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Oh gosh. My degree is in literature. Not animals. And I had a number of jobs. I worked in commercial real estate and property management for a while — that's what I was doing prior to working in the shelter. So very much a nine-to-five downtown girl at that point. Not something I've ever thought of going back to, that's for sure.

[8:44]  COLLEEN PELAR

About the same level of passion there, huh?

[8:47]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

No. Perhaps a little more lucrative, I think. Depending.

[8:53]  COLLEEN PELAR

So what is it that you find most fulfilling about your work right now?

[9:05]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

It is absolutely connection with my community — with the people that I work with. That is the most important thing to me. Again, I adore animals. I connect with animals. They bring me joy — the entire spectrum of emotions, truly. They make me feel like both a human and an animal, and connect me to nature. But I think that especially in times that are stressful or transitional, or with world events that we have no control over, the antidote for that feeling of having no control is connection. And connection with my community.

[10:00]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

So I love hearing people talk about their animals. I love finding things that my clients are already doing really well and that they really enjoy, and being able to encourage more of that. I mean, technically this is positive reinforcement with humans, but it's so much more. There is, I think, with that connection — even if it is remotely and not in person, and I do a hybrid of both — it's so needed to feel supported by another human being. I realized that there's a spectrum of information that you can kind of DIY and find on the internet or ask AI, but there really isn't something that can substitute connection and communication with another human being who empathizes and has the ability to help one understand that they are not alone in this problem. That there are very few zebras out there, and even if it is a zebra, we will find someone who's an expert in zebras to help support them. And just feeling a part of my community, and seeing how that also helps others — I have clients come back sometimes years later to share stories, sometimes successes, sometimes losses, and keep in touch. And those connections are so important to me. I think it goes beyond a service transaction. These are really relationships.

[11:55]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah. I love that. It's so deep, and you don't always know what any given connection might give you or give them. But it's all nuance — the richness of human experience, and having people to share elements of it with makes it more of our own experience. More that we're alive and awake and living our lives, as opposed to just kind of doing the same thing. So that passion matters.

[12:39]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Slowing down a little bit. I'll admit to being the type of person — sometimes when I'm trying to gather a lot of information or learn something new, especially when it's online — I'll speed up the tone of voice or the speed of the recording. And while that helps things get into my brain a little bit quicker, there's something about the breath and the cadence — and maybe this is because I'm a writer and a poet — that when we're interacting with humans in a face-to-face conversation, there's something in those pauses, in that empty space too. There's something about having the time to read each other in nonverbal ways that we just don't get online as much.

[13:46]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah. I do listen to podcasts and things, usually at 1.25, and occasionally if the person was a particularly leisurely narrator, sometimes as much as 1.5. My husband swears that nobody could listen to me at 1.25 or 1.5 because I talk too fast for him in my regular speech. I don't think that's true. I think there are some listeners out there who can follow along with me, even speed it up a bit. But I agree that there's a lot that happens, particularly in face-to-face conversation, in the quiet, in the pause. And in audio-only too, but even more so face-to-face, because we're conscious of the other person — interpreting, integrating, pondering, understanding or not understanding. We can see some of that happening in real time. And it helps on all the levels of empathy and connection.

[14:45]  COLLEEN PELAR

Nature is slow. And change can be slow. I mean, it can happen quickly, but often it happens slow. One of my frustrations when I'm feeling cranky is: if you've spent five years or ten years changing the way you show up for yourself, something is shifting for you. Five or ten years out of 80 is a pretty big chunk. Like, oh come on, can we do this faster? And yet nature is slow. We need to adapt. We need to adjust. We need to continue in small increments and maintain those and keep going. We do better that way, typically, if we allow things to take the time they need to take, while continuing to focus on it and address it. Not neglect, but just allowing the space and time for things to unfold.

[15:58]  COLLEEN PELAR

I ask all of my guests to share words that matter to them, and you shared these: "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner." Tell me about that — where did that phrase come to you, at what time in your life, what did it mean to you then, and why does it stick?

[16:42]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

It sounds so trite, but it was a fortune cookie. A slip of paper that came to me. However, I later became a sailor and thought that this adage could be applied to as many things — frankly, in sailing, which is a lot about working with nature rather than against nature, and is definitely a skill set. I wrote a blog comparing good animal management to how we think about sailing and becoming a sailor some time ago. There are so many overlaps. For me, it's a reminder of acceptance of certain things we cannot control, and that there are lessons in these rough waters.

[17:40]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

So if everything is easy peasy — just follow this little recipe step by step, and your dog is going to learn these things, linear progression, magic wand — that's not reality. And also, you will not learn how to troubleshoot. That is actually one of my goals in the work I do: to help give people the tools and hopefully work with them long enough that we actually see plateaus and regressions and run into tricky scenarios, and share with them my thinking process so that they see — okay, here are the things we can try, here are the risks and the benefits of any one of these interventions. This can also be applied to nonprofit organizations, municipal organizations, like a shelter or rescue. It empowers growth in the individual or the team, and will help inform their problem-solving skills in the future. Not everything is going to work for every case. If everything were super easy, you wouldn't learn anything. When something hits you really hard and you ask, why isn't it working? — there can be feelings of shame and guilt and frustration. It can get people to quit. Sometimes that exposure to those stressors early on, or some of those little frustrations — maybe it's not a gale-force windstorm, but a little bit of chop that we have to deal with — maybe something breaks and we have to do a quick fix in the moment, and then realize we are not equipped right now and need to go back to safe harbor and reassess. And to not look at those things as failures, but as skill-building. We become better captains of our ships.

[21:06]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah, I think that's beautiful. One of the things that popped into my head is that we do require challenge to learn and grow. We need a little bit of "how does this work, and how can we adapt it?" — and it will come in different levels, but it's the art and the action of learning in the moment and seeing what worked and what didn't where we get the most value. I have hip issues — chronic, forever — and one of the exercises I'm supposed to do is standing on one leg while the other leg is moving. They say: stand by a counter you can put your hand on to restabilize, but as much as possible, don't. Because there are 8,000 little micro-movements when you're on one leg trying to stay there and stabilize through the whole system while the other one is moving around. And there's learning happening all the time — this is too much, this is too little, oh I can actually do this, amazing. And sailing feels very much like that. You have the craft and you're trying to move it, but you're on an unsteady surface of water. It moves, it changes, the air moves and changes, and the balance of the human on the sailboat moves and changes. All of that will teach you something that may or may not be replicable if we were to do it again in five minutes.

[22:58]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Different right — the conditions. But you've learned something.

[23:03]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Yes, exactly. And when I bring that back to animals — there's so much happening in these moments. It's very much about course corrections. There's no perfection here. And learning how to make the decisions about how to do these course corrections — which may be quite subtle sometimes. Loosening up a little bit on the leash pressure, which people are very loath to do because they always feel like the more I'm choking up, the more control I have. Or letting something play out for maybe a half-second longer than you have in the past. Maybe a social interaction. But also keeping your eye on body language and noticing the subtleties. Figuring out where we can make choices available to the animal, so that they are available and desirable and potentially rehearsed. But also having contingency plans. Sometimes you do have to put your hands on the countertop. Sometimes we do have to U-turn and just get out of dodge. And again, not a failure — there's also information there. It doesn't mean you don't try again.

[24:30]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

I'll often have interview-style conversations with people about what they noticed — whether it's a volunteer in an organization, a staff member, or a private client. And sometimes they can't always necessarily put their finger on it. I don't expect everybody to be an expert in body language. Sometimes, especially with the younger folks I work with, it's just "the vibes were off." That's a fine answer, too. Because while we have ethograms of behavior and large agreement on body language for certain species and what it quote-unquote means, I also believe in sometimes our human-animal senses — ones that we don't have language for in that moment. And I trust people, especially those who have a relationship with that individual companion animal. They can learn to notice more and more. Whereas I may be really good at noticing the tiniest of lip curls or a tail going still for a millisecond, if for them it just feels like a vibe, and that helps them identify when stress is increasing — that's fine. They don't need to become ethologists or have the scientific language for it. I just need them to have that feeling so that they can identify it in the future and course correct as necessary.

[27:00]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah. And it is a knowing that they have — it's that they don't necessarily have the language to articulate their knowing.

[27:10]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Right. And they think they do. Sometimes I think we can get ourselves a little over-educated and stop listening to those inner voices that aren't using words necessarily.

[27:30]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah. Language is not our first go-to. You know, we have our experience, and then we make meaning about our experience, and then we try to put it into language, and then if we add another person, they have to interpret our language and make meaning from that and guess at what our experience was. So we've got this awkward hierarchy where we're losing data at every level. What did I have in my experience versus what meaning did I make? — I've left some of it out already. And then by the time I put words to it. But it is so valuable to ask people what they noticed, because it turns their attention inward, even to that spot of not having language. You're creating the awareness internally for them to start noticing: how am I tracking this companion animal? What am I noticing about it? What am I feeling about what I'm noticing? All of that — super helpful.

[28:38]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Yeah, not just noticing outward, but inward too. Because while I don't believe that a pet can become stressed just because we are stressed, I think when people become more aware of their own internal weather — then that's going to inform what they do in that moment when they are faced with a challenge. And that can be shifted and changed over time. But it's also just good to know: what are our go-tos? Where's our safe place to get to so that we feel better and more confident? I don't want to try to protect humans, as well as animals, from 100% of stress. I think that's a fool's errand. But I want consent from everybody about what level we push towards, and also helping them know what to do if that felt like too much in the moment.

[29:40]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

And I think too we sometimes have these blind spots where we're focused so much on this dichotomy of good behavior/bad behavior, or I'm a good owner or a bad owner of an animal. Getting people out of that type of thinking is really important to me. We all have good days and not-so-good days. But the black-and-white thinking can be crushing, and again, can cause us to give up prematurely, I think.

[30:40]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah. So what's something that you've learned about yourself as a result of all your work with animals?

[30:49]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

I am a lot more patient than I thought I was. But I don't know that I could have come to this work earlier in my life. I am in my 40s now, and I really respect folks who have been doing this since they were teenagers. I don't know that I was the type of person in my teens and 20s that could have done this, because at that point I was just a completely different person. So anyone who says that people don't change — I think [they themselves] have very much changed. There are themes and things that are the same, certainly. But yes — I'm a lot more patient with animals, with other people, and with myself. And if you had told me 20 years ago that I would have the patience that I do now, I don't think I would have believed it at all. So it was a nice thing to discover.

[31:55]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

I've also discovered, in a very practical way, how to determine whether or not a case, a project, a particular client is a good fit for me, and what I need to do for myself to keep me going long term. All of that stuff is very personal to the individual, and it shifts. I'm about to take a nice long break, and I'm noticing that I timed it correctly, because the last week or so has been a little extra stressful. I'm having to let a few things fall off the plate and decide: let's put this down, or let's back-burner this right now. And I used to feel a lot of guilt about that. I think early in my career there was a sort of "I can do it all" — verging on maybe a savior complex. And now what I've learned about myself is that I have the most impact, do the best work, and have the most ability to stay in this work when things are in balance. Choosing the right folks. Being able to — I'm very fortunate now to have such a wide network where, if an inquiry comes to me and I don't feel that we're the best fit, there are lots of other folks and resources I can give them, so they're not just floating out there into the abyss. So that's really helpful.

[33:30]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

My connection with colleagues — this can be very lonely, especially if you work for yourself. So I make a huge point to meet up in person with other people who are working in this field, and build those relationships and connections. Now, none of us are getting paid for that time. Sometimes we talk directly about work and our cases — obviously without names or identifying details, privacy is very important to me. We hive-mind some things. But also sometimes it's just about connecting with another person and someone who understands what this work is like. And so that's a big part of my job, even though it's not directly a paid part. It pays huge dividends — with referrals, which go both ways, with not feeling so alone.

[35:00]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

It is something that the Pet Professional Guild has identified as a need. So I forgot to mention — I chair a committee for the Pet Professional Guild, the Shelter and Rescue Committee. But another committee is working on a project called Behavior Teams, which is helping to provide a framework for folks who maybe don't have as much connection with the other people working in the field, especially in their area.

[35:50]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

And I think that sometimes we are — and I may have been, at one point — afraid to either reach out or connect, because we think: these are the people we're competing with. There's this sense of scarcity. "I can't possibly connect with this person because they're going to take all my clients." Or they won't want to connect with me because they think I'm going to poach their work. That has not been my experience at all. In fact, quite the opposite. So for anyone listening who's thought about this — and you don't even necessarily need to align perfectly in terms of views and methodology. I think a general sense is sometimes good. But I certainly have conversations with folks who use different tools and different ways of teaching than I do. And I don't believe in passing purity tests in order to connect with another human being who, at their core, is still caring about the same things I do.

[37:29]  COLLEEN PELAR

That's really beautifully said. Thank you. So if you could grant a wish — bestow a blessing upon pet professionals — what would you give us all? I feel like you've already given us so much, but I'm curious to know how you'd synthesize.

[37:49]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

I think the wish would be for some bravery. To put yourself out there a little bit. And I'm looking at the sign behind you, which says "show up for yourself." I think part of showing up for yourself is actually showing up around other people, and ideally in person. Even if that's outside of the field — connecting with other human beings, even if there are no animals around. That, I think, is the biggest piece of showing up for yourself. And it does take some bravery. And many of us who do work with animals would identify as introverts. This isn't something that needs to be every day or all the time. Every once in a while, just see: can I step outside my comfort zone a little bit and connect with another human? It can even be a simple conversation with somebody who's walking down the street with their dog. It doesn't need to have a goal in place. Just say hello. Compliment somebody else on their dog. Start a conversation — even if it's just small talk. There's a lot underneath the surface of those words that can be very healing.

[39:32]  COLLEEN PELAR

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So if people wanted to learn more about you and your work, Holden, how could they do that?

[39:39]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

The easiest way would probably be through my website, which is holdencanine.com. I imagine you'll put a link in the description. I can also be found through the Pet Professional Guild — with the Rescue Division, which is the committee dedicated to supporting shelter and rescue organizations.

[40:09]  COLLEEN PELAR

Well, thank you so much for talking with me today, Holden. It's been really a treat.

[40:13]  HOLDEN SVIRSKY

Thank you so much, Colleen, for doing this. I really look forward to listening to future episodes and your future guests as well.

[40:23]  COLLEEN PELAR

Thank you. That's our conversation for today. If something we talked about resonated, I invite you to sit with it. Notice what feels true and what you want to explore further. You don't have to have it all figured out to start moving toward what matters. Whatever showed up for you today — clarity, questions, even resistance — trust that it's pointing you toward something important. For more support, join my weekly notes at colleenpelar.com. And until next time, remember: you are enough, always, just as you are.