Episode 35 Becoming a Conflict Olympian with Carm Aufderheide

in this episode Carm Aufderheide Joins me to talk about how we can become conflict Olympians. Working in shelter and rescue can often lead to difficult, emotionally charged situations. Being able to handle these to the best of our abilities can really aid welfare by gaining a better understanding of struggles, pressure and behaviour from the owners point of view. Carm discusses how we can create safe environments for people, Understand our own emotions and those of others and how we can support ourselves as well as owners. About Carm I’m Carmaleta Aufderheide, but I mostly go by Carm. Before working with dogs, I had a rich NICU nursing career and raised a family. I then returned to graduate school to earn my master’s degree in conflict and dispute resolution (CRES). During my time in CRES, I conducted research investigating the impacts of the human-animal bond with vulnerable populations that sealed my future as a professional dog trainer. After completing CRES, I graduated from the Karen Pryor Professional Dog Training Academy (KPA-CTP), and soon after earned my Certified Professional Dog Training credentials (CPDT-KA). Since 2016, I’ve helped improve communication and repair strained relationships for hundreds of people and their dogs. After 6 years of helping clients and their dogs reach their training goals ranging from obedience, therapy prep, canine good citizen prep, and fear reactivity...it was separation anxiety cases that continually held my attention. The difficulty of these cases was unparalleled with poor resolution. Traditional training often fell short and I wanted more for my clients, so I invested in more education and earned my Certified Separation Anxiety Training credentials under the mentorship of Malena DeMartini, a world leader on separation anxiety.