168. Debbie Sheridan, UW-AAB 

COLLEEN: 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. Welcome back to Unleashed at Work and Home. My guest today is Debbie Sheridan, the owner of Debbie's for Dogs. Welcome, Debbie.

[0:49]

DEBBIE: Oh, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here today.

[0:52]

COLLEEN: I'm so happy to have you. So, tell us a little bit about what kind of pet pro you are, what it is you do.

[0:59]

DEBBIE: So I work with dogs mainly. I work with all sorts of issues, but my favorite—and what I do the most—is I help people to understand their fearful dog. People call because the dog is growling, or trying to go after people who are coming in the home, or I get a call because there's been a few bite incidents, and sometimes I get a call after the fact. And it's always—my favorite sweatshirt says "celebrate the growl," and I always try so hard to help people to see that a growl is something that we don't shut down. We listen to it. We want to hear the growl, and be curious: what's upsetting you? How can we make it better? So many times I see people after they have used people who have taught them to do terrible things in the name of training. And I've cried with many people. We have. And I share that if a dog is lunging or growling because they're not feeling comfortable, and they're feeling afraid, and then you hurt them—with a quick jerk or a shock collar—all you're doing is teaching them that they were right to be afraid. And many times, as it happens when they call me, it gets worse, because we have taught them they were right to be afraid, and then now they can't even feel comfortable to say it. Their life is pain, fear, and intimidation—by people who are trying to help.

[3:02]

COLLEEN: I know, like, their goal is to make things better. And I love "Celebrate the Growl," because the warning signals are such important communication. And if we teach animals that they don't work—that nobody understands, nobody's listening—it's so disheartening, and so dangerous.

[3:27]

DEBBIE: So dangerous. It's horrible for your relationship with your animal, and it's horrible for the animal. And then we have people say—when it does work—"Look at my dog, so well behaved, so obedient." And I actually dislike that word very much, because I'm not obedient, and I don't want— I want my dogs to be able to be free thinkers. So usually that's just a dog afraid to let anybody know how they're feeling, afraid to do anything that can get them some more pain—or be yelled at. And I think people always relate better when you can turn it around and help them to see through their own life, their own eyes. And I try to do that with whatever it is that we're talking about. So, with the growl, I always say to clients, as humans, we growl all the time. If I give an example—my husband usually throws out my tea. I make it, and I let it sit for a little bit because it's too hot. And then I'll come in and I'll be like, "Dave, you threw out my tea. Why did you do that again?" And if I was a dog, that would sound like a growl.

[4:50]

COLLEEN: So, as humans, we growl all the time, and we hold dogs up to standards that we would fail at time and time again. So unfair. And you know, people stop and think, and they get it. It makes sense to them. We do sort of treat growls as extreme communication, and yet—to compare it to "why'd you throw out my tea again"—that's about the fact that last night I was cooking, and we have two grandchildren, four and one and a half, and it was a day. And while I was cooking dinner, Jack walked over, looked in the pan I was cooking in, and goes, "Well, don't forget, I wanted you to add peas." [laughs] Please, don't be one more person who's micromanaging me—I know, I know, I'm just getting started. And the one-and-a-half-year-old is standing hanging on my leg going, "I need a hug," and I'm like, "Oh buddy, I have a pan in front of me. This is not the moment." The peas—

[6:10]

DEBBIE: Yeah. All right, cooking with little people is always interesting.

[6:15]

COLLEEN: Yeah, yeah.

[6:17]

DEBBIE: [unclear — reference to "jaws" and drool; possibly a comment about dogs or children at the table]

[6:22]

COLLEEN: There's a lot of drool happening. Yep. And you know—

[6:25]

DEBBIE: So, back to the growl. I unfortunately lost my Fitzy dog at the end of February, and he was really a dog who is so big in my world, because he changed the trajectory of my life. I brought him home thinking he was going to be my hiking buddy—him and his sister—and instead of being afraid of the world, they had a tough beginning. So I did all these deep dives. I hired somebody, I didn't like what he said, and I became the person I am today. And there were four dogs—Debbie's four dogs—I had three dogs and my son had a dog who was here a lot, so Fitzy was the last of the four, and it was a very tough loss.

[7:17]

DEBBIE: And I often say to people—everybody has to do what's right for them—but I sometimes say that one of the best ways to help your heart heal is to bring home another dog who needs you. And so I was with my granddaughter, and we went into a store, and she went to a bucket, and she found this stuffed animal, and she said, "Nana, look, all these animals, and there's only one dog. I think that means you need to get him." And I looked at him, and he was the exact dog I had been watching at the shelter—the pound, actually, in Hartford. And I said, "Oh my gosh, Kinley, he looks just like Ned." She said, "Nana, show me a picture of Ned," and I showed her, and she said, "Oh, Nana, it's the same dog. You know what this means—you have to go and get Ned. You believe in signs from the universe." I drove home and I went to the pound and I brought home Ned. And Sally was growling at Ned—but we know that a growl is good information—so I was thinking, maybe Ned can't stay here, but I'll foster him. But after a little bit, he is like a bull in a china closet, and Sally wasn't sure what to make of him. After a few weeks, they're doing okay. But again, that's a perfect example: what if I had yelled at Sally for saying, "Oh my gosh, I'm really not so comfortable with this strange new person in my house"? We would feel the same way if we came home to some new person living in our house.

[9:13]

COLLEEN: For sure. A question I love to ask all my guests is: when you were ten, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

[9:21]

DEBBIE: When I was ten, I thought I was going to be someone who would counsel humans and help them to feel better. And I did do that—I counseled adults and adolescents. And then when I brought Fitzy and Stella home, I switched to being a canine coach. I called myself a life coach, and it's still counseling humans. I help them through their dogs. And so—have you stopped doing non-dog-related human counseling? Yeah, I just— when I brought Fitzy and his sister Stella home from the shelter in Vermont, I had a dog, a terrier, and he was nine then, and we kept him until he was 15. And I really kept him alive for too long. And my sister came to visit and she said—as only a sister could say—"You are doing that dog such a disservice." I got very angry with her, but she was right. And I let him go. I made three appointments to help him pass over—the first two I canceled, and the third time I got there, and my vet said, "How are you doing?" And I said, "I'm leaving." She said, "Deb, you have to let him go with some dignity." I said, "He still wags his tail when he sees me." She said, "He will always wag his tail when he sees you. It's time." And I realized that he had been suffering. And I should have done it earlier. And that comes with a lot of guilt and sadness. So then Fitzy's sister passed away at age six because her liver shut down—because they were so malnourished way back, early on—and I kept her not as long, but too long. And then I went through the University of Vermont program and became an end-of-life doula for companion animals. In that regard, that's more about helping people know when it's the right time. And then as I lost Fitzy at the end of February—and that was a crazy thing, where I was really feeling stuck—as it happens, Fitzy is saying, "Well, now it's time for you to do this." And now I'm becoming a pet loss support group specialist, also through the University of Vermont. These are things I'll do more on the side, but I don't think I'll ever walk away from going into people's homes and helping them understand their dogs. I think so many times people bring a dog home—whether you rescue, whether you get a dog from a breeder, wherever the dog comes from—and you have in your head what this relationship is going to be like, what you're going to do with your dog. And when it doesn't go the way you anticipated, unfortunately the first reaction is, "I have to fix the dog."

[13:32]

DEBBIE: But dogs—people need to know that dogs are like humans. Some humans are extroverts and some are introverts. And if you end up with a dog who you thought was going to be your hiking buddy, but they're afraid of the world, then you have to look at your dog and say, "I will love you for who you are, and I know I can't make you into something you're not."

[14:00]

COLLEEN: And I think that's a really important message—because people need to know this about dogs: that they're free thinkers. They're not a pile of clay that you can mold into your own creation. And I do think dog training for a long time, when it was obedience training, created this image of control and reliability and predictability, and that's really tough on everyone. It's tough on the humans; it's really tough on the dogs to be fit into "this is what I expect, and the one who's going to change here is you." And it's still like that.

[14:56]

DEBBIE: And I mean, I go walking, and I see it, and that makes me sad. So I wrote a little book—it's called Sally Decides. It's a little book with a big message. It's appropriate for kids or adults, and it's about one example. It says "kindness always for the win." And I ask people not to ask their dog to sit. But if you sign up for a group class, it's usually the first thing that's worked on, and people are like, "Look at that, he can sit." But they can sit—we can sit—but imagine if every time we walked into a room, someone told us we had to sit. And when dogs get old, most of them have bad arthritis in the back of their legs, and it hurts them to sit. But dogs are stoic, and they want to please us. So you ask them to sit, and they say, "Oh gosh, this really hurts me, but I know it makes you happy," and they sit. So I ask all of my clients to throw out sit and instead use wait. Because wait is wonderful. You can get to the end of a sidewalk, or you can get to a door opening, and you could say, "He, wait"—use your little stop sign hand—and your dog's going to learn what wait means. But the beauty of that is it's up to them if they want to sit down or stand up or lay down while they're waiting. And that's important, because somewhere along the line, over the centuries, we decided we had to control every aspect of a dog's life. And I don't know why that happened, but humans are pretty egotistical, and it did happen. So I like to throw that away. Because a good wait is really all you need. Last winter I was out walking without my dogs—it was so cold—and there was a woman on the sidewalk next to me. It was eleven degrees out, there was slush all over the sidewalk, and she made her dog sit. And unfortunately, this dog also had on a shock collar and a prong collar, and she sternly told her to sit. I looked over, and the dog was shivering. And I just looked at her and said, "You know, I wouldn't want to sit in that." And she looked at me. And when it was time to walk, I said, "You could teach a wait," and she said it's time to walk. I don't think I made any progress for that dog, but I felt very bad for her—that little girl.

[18:13]

COLLEEN: Yeah, and you wonder how come people don't think about these things.

[18:18]

COLLEEN: I do wonder that. And I think there's a little bit of a block in people who don't think about it—they just haven't ever— I mean, there used to be, and hopefully this is completely gone—so much testing done on animals without any acknowledgment that animals actually feel pain, like those were just automatic responses. And somehow people are managing not to see the evidence, not to take it into account. And I think it might be partly because our brains are such storytellers. All of the stories about the dog "blowing you off," the dog ignoring you— I was taught when I first started training that if a dog turns away from you, they're snubbing you, they're ignoring you. And when I learned about calming signals, and could really identify, "Oh, this is a behavior that has meaning—" I was so horrified. Not that I had ever been a trainer who was like "thou shalt not blow me off," but I had been in classes with trainers who had that methodology, with my own dogs. And I would be like, "Please don't let them notice us over here in the corner." And the disconnect between "they're blowing you off" and "they're a little over their head"—it's 180 degrees. It's crazy. And yet when we're looking for obedience, and "thou shalt listen," when they don't listen, there has to be a reason. And the easier reason is because they're bad, or they're making a mistake, or they're blowing you off.

[20:18]

DEBBIE: And they're just trying their best to say—

[20:22]

COLLEEN: "I'm not feeling so comfortable with this."

[20:25]

COLLEEN: Yeah. Just heartbreaking. So, when you mentioned your book, you also snuck in the theme words of today—because I ask all of my guests to share some words that had meaning for them, and the words you shared with me were "kindness always wins." And when you talked about Sally Decides, you said kindness always wins. So tell me a little more about kindness—how "kindness always wins" came into your life as something important to hold on to and share.

[21:19]

DEBBIE: Well, I think it's so important to always try your best to be kind to others, no matter who they are, no matter what they are. When I was in sixth grade, my girlfriends turned on me. You know, sometimes it's a crazy time in life when you're an adolescent girl. And I think that's when I really started to think—when I grow up, I'm going to counsel kids, I'm going to help people know how to relate to people in a good way. And there's so many studies out there—when you bounce back to the dogs—that dogs who are treated with kindness get it right much more than dogs who are treated with pain, fear, and intimidation, because everybody responds to kindness. And if you're walking down the street, I like to notice people and just say, "Oh wow, I love your scarf"—not telling a lie, but if they have this cool scarf, being nice. And oh, how much effort does it take to do something like this? And you get such a smile. And you feel good too, because you've made someone else happy. And I think when you're kind to others, you feel better in your heart.

[22:43]

DEBBIE: And I've also always felt like you can tell so much about a person depending on how they are towards animals. And we know—though sometimes I don't really believe it—studies show us that dogs have the brain of a toddler. Toddlers always do better with kindness. Everybody does better with kindness. No matter who you are, no matter what you are, it's better to be a kind person. You feel—you can look back on your day and smile about it. You don't have to feel bad about what you did to somebody, or a dog. And I just think we should have kindness posters all over the place—so people can be reminded. It is actually built into your business as a tagline, like, yes—kindness always for the win. And I get so many clients after they've used a person who wasn't kind to their dog, and I've heard such terrible, terrible stories. They're heartbreaking. Why would we even contemplate something like that? I know so many people hire someone not knowing, because it is an unregulated field. You don't know. Somebody is the professional, and they come in and say, "Well, you need to do this. And if you don't, you're weak, and your dog's going to dominate your life and your house." Many people have told me, "It sounded terrible, but we felt like we had to do what he said—he knew more than us, he knew better than us." It's a crazy thing.

[25:00]

COLLEEN: You know, if it doesn't feel right to you, it's not. Those are important words to live by. And actually, as you say that, I think it ties into that whole story-making thing—because when it doesn't feel right to you, and then the trainer tells you a story that makes it feel better— like, "Oh, you're actually hurting the dog by coddling the dog"—and you can shift someone's inner knowing of "this isn't for me" to "oh, maybe I don't know enough, maybe the expert knows better." And then not that it feels good to them, but it feels less bad. And so then people wind up doing things that do go against their gut, because the expert told them to.

[26:03]

DEBBIE: Right. My old terrier flipped out because he was terrified of thunderstorms—he would shake and drool, and I would just hold him. And I had somebody tell me once, "You know, you're encouraging that behavior when you do that. You need to just ignore him when he's like that, because you are encouraging that behavior." And I hear this from people a lot—they're told that even today, still, even about thunder. And that's not a behavior, that's an emotion, that's a feeling. All you can do is do your best to comfort and make them feel better. And there are certain things—some dogs do better if you get a big blanket, some dogs do better with a thunder shirt, some dogs should humanely have some medication if you know a thunderstorm is coming. But to comfort them is not encouraging their fearful emotion. And it's always—I'm so blown away when I hear someone tell me that today, that they've heard it recently.

[27:31]

COLLEEN: That is surprising. I mean, I know that we're in sort of an insular world. First, the education is changing dramatically and quickly—I stopped training in 2018, and with dogs I've had since then, I've learned some really cool new things from trainers I've taken my dogs to. I'm like, "Oh, I wish I could have known that then." And there's also a piece of me that's like, "Is all that old stuff still really circulating as much as it is?" And of course it is.

[28:07]

DEBBIE: It's so— [overlapping]

[28:10]

COLLEEN: Yeah. I know. I wish it were a more regulated field. You wouldn't hire a plumber who wasn't really good at knowing what to do with your drain.

[28:32]

DEBBIE: An electrician could blow up your house if he wasn't really an electrician. It's tough stuff.

[28:44]

COLLEEN: So, what's something you've learned about yourself since you made the switch from human clients—focusing on human things—to dog-and-human pairs? What's something you know now about you that maybe you didn't know before?

[29:03]

DEBBIE: I learned— well, it was interesting. Because after my friends turned on me in sixth grade, after I got through that, I became a fighter for the underdog. Ever saw any kids picking on another kid in college, I would immediately come to their defense. I was just not going to let that happen. And I guess I'm just the same for the dogs now. It's very hard—if I'm with my dogs, I don't do anything—but if I'm out on a walk without my dogs and I see someone using a shock collar or a prong collar, I'll go up and I'll say, "Oh, your dog's so cute," and I'll try to start a kind conversation. "Have you ever thought about this? Have you ever thought about a harness?" And some people are open to it, and some people you can tell right away are just like, "Mind your own business." But I think for me, I'm always going to fight for someone who I think is being wronged—whether they're a human or a dog or a lizard. And actually, a couple of years ago on Instagram, there are jumping spiders—I don't know if you've ever heard about this—that are like pets. And one of my daughters has a solid fear of spiders, as many people do. But I started watching these spiders, and they all have names, and they can do things, and they recognize their people. And it's this really cool thing. And I see spiders in such a different way now. In my bathroom, there's a spider now, and his name is Calvin. The first time I noticed Calvin, he ran away. But now he knows I'm not going to hurt him. Sometimes I'll give him a Q-tip of water. So it's this interesting thing—we can open our minds to different situations, and we can always learn something new. I think it's so important to always go forward and be willing and open to learning what else you can know. Even if it's learning that spiders can be named and you can befriend a spider.

[32:00]

COLLEEN: How does your daughter feel about Calvin?

[32:03]

COLLEEN: She— how does she feel about spiders now?

[32:10]

COLLEEN: I'm just curious if she can go to the bathroom at your house, or if she's like, "No, no, I'm not going in that one—that one's Calvin's bathroom." [laughs] Now, in Connecticut— but I've talked to her, and she said she's trying to be more open and accepting. She said there was a spider in her kitchen, and instead of freaking out, she just went by and said, "Hey, if you stay there, I'm okay, and I'll stay here." I guess they came to an agreement. That's good. For me, a jumping spider— I have a problem with crickets jumping. Like, the unpredictability of the movement kind of triggers my— as many dogs do. Startle response. It's so funny. And then I'm on high alert but low functionality.

[33:06]

COLLEEN: I watch myself deteriorate in real time when there's a cricket or something. So—

[33:11]

DEBBIE: That's so funny.

[33:13]

COLLEEN: Yeah. Things we could—we can desensitize you to crickets. Yeah. I lived in Virginia; we had crickets fairly often, but I haven't really seen too many in Michigan since I've moved. So hopefully I haven't just brought them upon me by mentioning them. But they're funny when one gets into your house—you can hear them. They're so loud, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, Mr. Cricket, I have to find you and put you back outside." And then when you get close, they boing—and they're four feet away. And then my cats would always just be like, "There's the cricket." "Isn't that your job?" "Yes, that is your job."

[34:21]

DEBBIE: But yeah, I became a dog bite prevention educator to help people understand more about bites too. And hopefully if we help a dog to know that they're being heard when they're growling or sending us some other messages, it doesn't have to escalate to a bite.

[34:55]

COLLEEN: Always the goal. So, for the pet professionals out there in the world—if I could give you a magic wand and you could give us a wish or a blessing or something, what would you give us?

[35:09]

DEBBIE: I would give us all the ability to take that wand and touch anybody on the head who was using a prong collar or a shock collar or any other things with their dog, and we could lightly touch them, and suddenly they would have all this knowledge that these things only truly make things worse, and that it just makes their dog suffer. And they would miraculously understand that kindness is the way to go and a harness is always a better option, because it feels good. And once again, where we kind of miss the boat is that dogs have a trachea and a thyroid gland and an esophagus, just like we do. And if we press on our throat, it is really uncomfortable. So to see all these dogs walking around with this—it feels the same to them. It's not comfortable. And many dogs pull on a leash to get away from that feeling. They just don't know—they're trying to like outrun it. It just makes it worse. So, yeah, magic wand would be lovely.

[36:32]

COLLEEN: That would be lovely—and that's a really nice gift to give. We will take it. When the magic wand appears, we'll hand it to you.

[36:42]

DEBBIE: On Facebook, there's this magic wand you can buy now where you put your credit card in—you can tap with the magic wand wherever you're buying things. People think it's pretty wild and cool.

[36:56]

COLLEEN: Interesting.

[36:57]

DEBBIE: Totally off topic.

[37:00]

COLLEEN: Kind of cool, though—never heard of that. So, if people wanted to learn more about you and your work, how could they do that?

[37:07]

DEBBIE: You could find me at my website, Debbie's for Dogs. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, and I'm just a phone call away—or an email—and I would welcome any kind of questions or concerns.

[37:21]

COLLEEN: Wonderful. I will link all that up in the show notes. And it's been so lovely talking with you today, Debbie.

[37:32]

DEBBIE: Nice to talk to you too. Thanks for having me. Have a great day. What are you going to cook tonight for dinner?

[37:38]

COLLEEN: We're going out—no worries about the [unclear — likely "he"] can just go into the back of the restaurant and say, "Don't forget, I wanted peas."

[37:45]

DEBBIE: Right. Thank you, Colleen.

[37:50]

COLLEEN: Have a great day.

[37:51]

DEBBIE: You too. Bye-bye.

[37:53]

COLLEEN: 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.