September 17, 2025 • 52 mins
What if the key to building trust with your dog could be found behind prison walls?
In this transformative episode of Straight Up Dog Talk, Em sits down with Mattison Skoog-Simpson, founder of Freed By Training, to share the life-changing lessons she learned while training dogs inside a prison-based rehabilitation program. This isn’t just about obedience—it’s about emotional healing, second chances, and relationship-based dog training that meets both dogs and people with compassion.
You’ll learn:
• How prison dog programs build trust, structure, and redemption—for dogs and humans
• Why connection > control—and how that shifts your training approach
• What to do when your dog (or you) has been mislabeled as “too much”
• How to navigate shame, guilt, and reactive dog parenting with grace
• The power of going slow, listening more, and leading with empathy
Whether your dog’s behavior feels overwhelming, or you’re carrying guilt about the journey—you’ll find hope, clarity, and permission to start again.
🎧 Press play to explore the deep connection between dog behavior, emotional healing, and the power of second chances.
👉 Connect with Mattison + get free resources:
Instagram: @freedbytraining
Website: freedbytraining.co
Straight Up Dog Talk Extras:
Get a free copy of Feeding without Fear for mealtime manners
https://straightupdogtalk.com/programs-%26-freebies/ols/products/feeding-without-fear
Book FREE 15-minute call with Em
https://tinyurl.com/booknowsudt
Email straightupdogtalk@gmail.com to get in touch with Em
This podcast explores real-life dog behavior and training, diving into reactivity, barking, dog anxiety, aggression, picky eating, gut health, and dog food—while unpacking enrichment, mental stimulation, supplements, calming aids, and holistic pet wellness. Whether you’re raising a rescue dog, supporting a senior dog, managing a velcro dog, or just navigating life with a dog who’s asking for more, you’ll find practical tools to build trust, strengthen communication, and create a safe, thriving life together.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I feel the same way about dogs. I feel like they brought me back
to life. They carried me through a lot of
really hard times in my own personal journey and being able
to reflect on that, it does you do you light up, that joy comes
back to you. You have all those memories and
it's fun to relive those momentsof a not so great time in your
life. You know that moment when
(00:28):
someone tells you your dog needsa muzzle and your stomach just
drops? If that's ever happened to you.
Just. Breathe.
You are not alone, and you're not doing anything wrong.
My guest today, Madison from Free By Training, gets it.
She's created an incredible freemuscle training course that
walks you through it step by step with kindness and clarity.
(00:49):
Whether you're navigating reactivity, safety, or just want
to do it right from the start, this course is honestly such a
gift. And if you're starting out with
a new puppy, she's got a free puppy resource bundle, too, with
everything you need to set up your dog for success without the
overwhelm. You can grab both of those and
even book a free phone consult if you're not sure what your dog
(01:10):
really needs at Freed by training.com or just tap the
link in the show notes. Seriously, don't miss out on
these. They're free and they're
actually helpful. Welcome to Straight Up Dog Talk,
the podcast that gets real aboutthe highs, the lows, and the
lessons of life with dogs. I'm your host and dog trainer,
canine nutritionist, and creatorof this space where pet parents,
(01:31):
pros, and passionate dog lovers come to feel seen, supported,
and never judged. Around here, we don't gatekeep.
We share the real conversations,honest experiences, and
practical insights that help youbuild a stronger bond with the
dog in front of you, no matter where you're starting, so you
can stop Googling and start feeling seen, supported, and
confident in the dog parent you are.
Today's guest is someone I deeply, both personally and
(01:54):
professionally admire. Madison Skoog Simpson is a dog
trainer, educator, and the founder of Freed By Training, a
mentorship space for professionals and pet parents
alike. But before all of that,
Madison's journey began in a place few people would expect
prison. During a five year sentence,
Madison found purpose, healing, and a second chance through
(02:14):
Training dogs and how she helps others find their own version of
freedom, whether they're struggling with shame, trauma,
or dogs that have been written off.
She's a friend and a mentor to me since before straight up dog
talk even existed, and I can't wait to hear this conversation.
It's about transformation, second chances, and how healing
happens often when we least expect it.
(02:34):
This episode is for you. If you ever felt stuck, ashamed,
or afraid you've messed up too much to start over, here's what
you'll take away. What it really looks like to
find purpose through pain. How training dogs helped Madison
come back to herself. How prison based dog training
programs can change lives on both ends of the leash, and why
second chances matter. What it means to own your story
(02:55):
and let go of the shame that's been holding you back in dog
training, in life and in healing.
Madison, you've shared before that you were broken with a
capital B when you went to prison.
What brought you to that point and what did healing look like
in the very beginning of your journey?
There was a lot of shame around ending up incarcerated and being
(03:18):
in that situation. And the healing that I needed to
do was very, very layered. There were relationships that
needed heal in my life, including the one with myself.
There was a lot of physical trauma that was being stored in
the body that took a long time to unravel.
(03:38):
And I know something that you and I have talked about is there
was a period of time both leading up to and then
especially in the early days of my incarceration where I was
very heavily medicated, especially for me.
And that led to a deep paralysisof, of any action of, of any
(03:59):
movement that if I had stayed there, I'd still be there.
Even out here, I'd still be there.
So that was one of the first things that I that I really had
had to move through and, and figure out was actually healing
the, the physical body to be able to even move forward from
anything else. You know, I was lost with 230
(04:21):
lbs. When I arrived to prison, I was
carrying a lot, right? Mentally and physically.
Yeah, yeah. Wow, I didn't know that about
your weight. I knew about the medications
because as you said, we've talked about our journey with
medications and both of us moving towards getting off of
medications, being over medicated by a system that we
(04:42):
had no control over. And what's really, really scary
is that it happened to you whileyou were incarcerated, but it
happened to me while I was not. And I think that something that
society has normalized is that taking antidepressants and
taking things like Xanax or Lorazepam or Klonopin is normal,
right? We take our Xanax and we drink
(05:03):
our wine. But honestly, I'm not sure that
that is necessarily the right way.
If we could actually all sit down and learn how to deal with
our emotions and process them, things might look a little bit
different. How did you advocate for
yourself when it came to the medication?
I think it's important to know that I was already on medication
(05:24):
prior to arriving at the prison where I spent a little bit more
than half of my, of my five yearsentence.
I believe I was on a 25 milligram dose of Zoloft.
We called it the anxiety dose and it was just, it should just
help with day-to-day anxiety. But when I arrived at the
institution that was increased to 200 and multiple other
(05:49):
medications were added in. And the process of getting the
medications was, was a little bit burdensome because they're
not just going to give a bunch of controlled substances to
inmates, right? So we had to go to special.
Now you could get your allergy medications given to you in
quantity, but with these types of medications you were getting
(06:11):
just your dose administered in away that they could make sure
that you were taking it. And so the process to actually
get off of those didn't begin until after I was out of the
admissions phase when I could actually initiate a conversation
with the mental health department.
That is also kind of tricky. I didn't start that until there
(06:31):
was really a catalyst. One of the medications that they
had added in there was Inderal and Elavil.
I believe it was the Elavil BB start sleepwalking When I was
released from admissions, which is like a 30 day period where
they medically clear you, assessyou for security and things like
that. I was living on a top bunk in
open housing, so there were about 300 women in one room.
(06:53):
It was not safer ideal to be walking around and climbing down
off of the bunk. When I reported these side
effects, they swapped it for a difference role, which made me
start sleep eating and my neighbors the next morning told
me you were making a real racketeating a bunch of chips in the
middle of the night. And sure enough, my whole bag of
(07:13):
chips was gone. I remember going to the mental
health department and expressingthese concerns.
And the response to my concerns was to hand me a list of
medication options and say, OK, what do you want then?
And that was so deeply worrying that I decided literally right
then in there, I handed the listback.
(07:34):
I told them I wanted to be takenoff of the two medications that
they had added on, which I've been refusing on a nightly basis
since the sleep eating. You could go to your to your
medication dispenser and say I'mhere because you had to be
there. You get in trouble, but I'm
going to refuse this medication.And then I asked them to reduce
the dosage of the Zoloft, but they have increased and we
(07:56):
slowly brought it down. And at the same time, my bunky
who during this process, I movedout of that open housing, I was
not there long. I got right into the dog
program. My bunkie signed me up for a
running program. It was a 10 weeks to 5K because
there was a prison wide 5K and she didn't ask you to sign me
(08:18):
up. So there was that.
So getting off of the medicationand sort of also getting, I
don't want to say taking control, although I think in
that moment it was like I'm going to take control in my life
wherever I can get it right now.But getting healthy and starting
those two things very much ran parallel also to the dog trains.
I made the decision to start healing and all of these
(08:39):
positive things started to get aligned, even in a pretty dark
place. It's funny how that happens with
healing, right? Once we start on the path to
healing, that's when everything starts to feel like you're in
the right time, you're in the right place, and then all of the
other things that you weren't even expecting just kind of
start coming in from nowhere andyou start to change your
(09:01):
attitude, you start to change your thought pattern and that
changes your whole day-to-day life.
What shifts did you notice afteryou made that intention to get
healthier and get off the medication?
Yes, again, all of these things and maybe maybe it's just
blurred because time has passed at this point, but the
beginnings are kind of tied together.
(09:21):
Getting into the dog program because I had to apply and be
accepted to get into the dog program because it was
considered honors housing. The shift was in no way subtle
because I went from being overlymedicated, sleeping 18 hours a
day. I had been assigned a job that I
went to once and they were like,we don't need you, but we're not
going to reclassify. You go and sleep away your five
(09:44):
years to basically boot camp. You were up, your bed was made
in a very specific way. There were rules against cussing
from basically 6:00 or 7:00 AM until 4:00 PM, and you were in a
very certain place at a very certain time, and you were
working. Like I said, it wasn't subtle.
It was like complete upheaval ofwhat I had come to know.
(10:06):
But I hadn't been there for verylong.
October was when I arrived and so I spent 30 days in
admissions. And so November, December,
January, February, like three, 3-4 months was all I spent in
that open style housing, which was tough.
And then being moved back into an area where not only was it an
(10:28):
environment change, it was the same present.
It was the same institution, butit was a very different culture.
And I was surrounded by other people that that also had a
desire to do something more thanjust sleep away.
Five years, right. So that was massively impactful
to be around people who signed you up for five days without
asking. Were you surprised that there
was such a big difference between where you left and where
(10:52):
you went to? Did you notice that was the case
in other areas of dormitory situations as well?
Or do you think it was just because you had to be so on
schedule because of the dogs? The first institution that I was
at, it was pretty large. It's the largest women's prison
in Ohio. I'm like 3600 women.
So there were a lot of little pockets of different cultures.
(11:15):
Now things have changed. Even while I was there, they
demolished buildings and built new ones and they've, they've,
they've done that since I've since I've been there.
So things have definitely changed.
But when I was there, there was one building in particular that
I know is no longer there that was called Lincoln.
And that's where they housed 2 things in particular.
The 1st is the Greyhound program, which is not the
(11:36):
program that was a part of. The second is this was the
dedicated location for inmates with life sentences.
So that has a very particular culture to it.
And those two things are not unrelated.
The greyhound program was run bylifers.
All of those dogs were there to just learn how to become dogs
and be pets and it was really, really beautiful.
(11:57):
But our program was different because we had all of this
structure and it was a business.It was the self-sustaining
business of the daycare and services for the staff, state
employees really, as well as theservice dog in the Humane
Society. So yeah, there were lots of
pockets of cultures that I was aware of.
And even before I was released from admissions, you would hear
(12:18):
from other inmates like, oh, youdon't want to pop out to this
unit or off the chain, right? Or you really want to end up
over here. And the building that I was in
that was this big open Bay was called Hale Hale.
But everyone feel like oh Hale, nobody really wanted to end up
there. OK, so tell us a little bit
about those first few weeks. What was it like?
(12:39):
What shifted for you after you started training dogs and
learning about training dogs? I think people maybe think I'm
joking about this when I say that when I first started
trading dogs, they didn't let ushave a dog for 30 days.
I walked a leash with no dog on the end of it for 30 days.
Now, if I had somebody with me observing as my mentor, as my
(13:01):
buddy, actively working with me,I was allowed to have a real
dog. But there was a lot of
preparation, there was a lot of education.
There was a 10 week curriculum and you had to go through these
ten weeks of classes and at the end of each week take an exam.
And at the end of the 10 weeks, you needed an 80% average to be
able to pass. Otherwise you went back in and
(13:22):
you started and you needed all of this to be able to come an
actual handler because again, wewere entrusted with the dogs of
the state employees. Now, this could be corrections
officers, unit managers, HighwayPatrol officers, wardens of
other prisons, and they needed to be sure that we knew what we
were doing. And there was a high volume of
(13:44):
dogs, 40 or 50 or more on a daycare day of just the staff
dogs. So it was a lot of chaos too, of
getting on this new rhythm, and it kicked my butt.
I remember the first couple of days sleeping so hard at the end
of the day and remember it was so different from the sleep that
(14:08):
I had been sleeping, which was just, I'm super medicated.
I'm reading Game of Thrones during my only waking hours and
I'm just sleepy and I'm bored. This was like I worked myself to
the bone because for an hour in the morning, an hour in the
afternoon, everybody lines up and they walk and they walk.
And if you don't have a dog, you're a spacer in between
people with dogs. And you walk, walk, and you walk
(14:28):
and you walk and you walk. And the rest of the day we were
in classes learning, or we were in training circle, which is
where you circle up with the dogs and there's a collar in the
middle calling out. Have your dogs sit, praise them,
have them stay, take three stepsaway, call them to you.
And it was just really hard. And I remember not being sure if
I would make it if I would last because there were so many rules
(14:51):
on top of there being institutional rules that if you
had a corrections officer write you up a conduct report on an
institutional rule that can go against early release or
something like that. Very important.
So you have those. And then back in these honor
dorms, you also have these interlocks that are assigned
(15:12):
inmate to inmate by inmates who are in positions of authority
within the hierarchy of the unitand the structure, because we
had housing advisors, hallway advisors, program advisors.
And so if you got, I think five of those interlocks in the 19
day period back out to general population and some of them were
(15:33):
if your bed was not made properly or if they heard you
cussing on the yard, they could write you an interlock.
So it was just a lot. I remember thinking like this is
so much like what if I can't keep up?
I don't want to go back there. I want to be here with the dogs.
It also felt very private because they were four man
cells. So compared to having 299
roommates, I only had three roommates and that felt great.
(15:56):
That felt like a huge improvement.
We had our own toilet that was also very, very, very big deal.
Big deal. Yeah, very, very big deal.
I mean, no privacy because the toilet was just right there.
But it was still better than having to share 10 toilets with
300 women. That would be very difficult for
me. I like my privacy when it comes
to the bathroom. That would be very hard for me.
(16:17):
And the walls where I was beforewhere the toilets were in a
separate area, it wasn't even private because the walls only
came up to about here so you could just look and be like the
person right next to you. Get comfy with being.
Uncomfortable. I made best friends with being
uncomfortable. That's just the truth of it is
you get used to that very, very quickly.
(16:39):
Comfort is not something that was promised in the
incarceration experience. And so I can't grab it where you
can find it. And if that means it's having
that that much more privacy within where you're residing
that I was willing to work to tokeep hold of that.
What do you think those years ofworking with dogs inside the
prison taught you about responsibility, connection and
(17:02):
self love? Responsibility, connection and
self love. You know, I have lost a lot of
things, a lot of qualities I think throughout the process
just leading up to that time. But I've always been a
responsibility, responsible person.
I've always taken responsibility, taken
accountability and ownership. And I don't feel like that ever
(17:23):
got got lost in the process. In fact, I feel like that was
magnified in the process. The ultimate taking of
accountability for your actions.But on the opposite end,
connection is something I had leading up to going to prison.
I spent as much time as I could building up as many walls as I
could, saying to myself, you're not going to be friends, you're
not going to let anybody in. You're going to be so tough.
(17:45):
And so I was very against reallymaking any connections in there,
but that's exactly what the dogswere.
They were the easiest thing in the world to connect with.
Now self love came a long time later that that that's really
like a more a more recent learning in my life.
But at that point I was still sodeep in the opposite end of that
(18:06):
spectrum, which is self clothing.
So dogs were absolutely instrumental to the very
beginning stages of crawling or claw falling out of that
particular pit. But they made me give out love
every day in a place where I didn't expect to.
And that was an important to start getting into, to be able
(18:27):
to then receive it again and to be able to then have that
connection. So of course, of course dogs for
me are part of of everything, ofall parts of my journey and all
parts of the story. But the self love, I think, like
I said came came much later. People think that you have to be
perfect to work with dogs, but you found working with dogs
through imperfection. What did it teach you?
(18:48):
I'm still learning this one because even recently people
have said to me, oh, I thought you had it all together.
And I'm like, really? Because my whole life was on
fire last year. What I want to say is that the
current lesson that I'm learningis to show up in the
imperfection, because perfectionwas never the goal anyway.
Nobody wants that. Nobody cares about that.
(19:10):
And to show up in your imperfection is to be willing to
be vulnerable enough to make space for other people to show
up as they are. And it's so important.
I was talking about this with Jerry the other day about the
need to just be vulnerable. And there were things that I was
admitting that were happening, right?
Like Remy ate a cookie, ate halfof the chocolate chip cookie.
(19:32):
And traders don't want to admit that that their dogs do things
like that. And we just, we just have to be
willing to show up imperfectly. Otherwise we're not going to be
approachable and we're not goingto help people.
And that's the first step, right, is for people to come
into our worlds and to be ready for help and to be honest with
us about what's really going on.And if we're not being honest
(19:54):
and they can't, that doesn't createspace safe space for them
to do that. Either I completely agree with
that. I think that it's better to show
up authentically and. Messily and say hey, I had all
these bad things happen to me orwe've had these bad experiences.
I posted a reel the other day about Fitz having a reaction in
the front yard and I shared it because I want people to see it
(20:15):
doesn't matter how long you've been working on a thing, stuff
still happens. You cannot control everything.
There is no perfection when it comes with dogs.
And to expect that, like you said, it's completely
unrealistic. And also, who wants a statue for
a dog? Not me, not me.
If you do you could have just gotten the statue right like
they have. They have dog statues.
(20:37):
You don't. You don't need to get a live 1
then they also. Get a stuff one.
Yeah, there are great alternatives.
Pet Rocks are great company for the right person.
But just like a fish, but you don't have to feed it.
Exactly. For some people, Pet Rock is
exactly what they're probably looking for in terms of the
amount of care that they wouldn't put into it.
(20:58):
They got very honest with themselves.
My gosh, how did you learn to own your story without shame?
Since we're talking about that, I know that this was a journey
for you, and I know that you've had a lot of support and
encouragement from people like Jerry, from people like me, from
other people saying, you know what?
We're out here trying to do the same thing.
You should do it too. But what was the real tipping
(21:19):
point for you? So I want to talk about the
people that were the opposite ofthat positive influence and the
fact that there were a couple ofinfluences that were very much
encouraging me to keep things inthe dark.
And this is part of the reason why the brand, the dog training
business that I had created and spent a period of time building
(21:42):
oriented to the ground. And what I, what I built from
from those ashes was was breed by training.
And even though it wasn't right in that moment that I came out
to tell my story, that was, thatwas the big moment of like, this
is who I am, barbed wire and thelogo and everything, right?
Like it felt like such a bold statement, but it was because of
(22:04):
being told to keep it a secret. And I remember there was, there
was a trainer that, that wanted me to come and work for them.
And they said to me when they found out that I was getting
married, that it was a great opportunity to change my name
and that if it were them, they would have done it the second
they got out. And I decided then and there
that I was not going to be changing my last name because
(22:25):
I'm, I'm proud of my family and my parents and where I'm from.
And even though there's a dark part of my story, I'm not
willing to build anything aroundtrying to keep something a
secret. And I did, I did try and keep it
a secret for the first several years of my training.
And I was exhausted, constantly afraid that my clients were
(22:47):
going to figure me out, Google me, right?
Something like that. And it was very, very scary.
And I chose just not to have it have that hold on me anymore.
I wanted to own the narrative. I wanted it to be something that
I could talk about, and it's taking years of practice to be
where I am now of being able to talk about it.
But you're absolutely right, there have been so many people
(23:08):
to shed light on it. Jerry is my ultimate safe space
for stuff like that because she and I have both taken the dark
night of the soul thing pretty much as far as it'll go.
Somebody who I don't talk about a lot, and it's not for lack of
love but for an overabundance ofrespect for privacy, is my to
your husband, who is my rock, mybiggest hype person, my best
(23:32):
friend, and is just think of themost supportive person in the
world. And he's at times 10 so.
And again, it's not for lack of love that he's not super present
on my social media. That's how he prefers it.
And he prefers the yearly birthday and anniversary shout
outs and that's about it. Yeah, it's not been easy to get
to this point of being able to talk about it in this way.
(23:54):
And even still, I get scared sometimes.
I care far less about being comfortable than I do about
reaching people who could like actually change their lives with
something that I might be able to share and that that's just so
much more important to me. And like I said, I made besties
with being uncomfortable. So just comfort.
(24:14):
And I, we do just fine. So any discomfort that I feel
from having to talk about hard things is just nothing compared
to the messages that I get from people that say that they feel
safe and they feel seen and theyare ready to give out or receive
a second chance somewhere in their life.
I love that. I also love that you keep your
relationship with your husband. I won't say his name.
(24:35):
I know that you've posted it on social media before, but I won't
say it even though I know what it is out of respect for him.
But I love that you keep that private because I don't
personally have anybody in my life right now.
But if I did, I would be the same way because I think that
there's a point to our vulnerability, to our sharing,
to our being transparent. That is our part of the journey.
(24:55):
But there are also other parts where our family is involved or
our loved one is involved, our partner, our sister or brother,
whatever. And maybe they don't want to be
part of that public aspect. And so I think that it's really
important to know where the boundary is when it comes to
sharing and over sharing. Because I think that you can
(25:17):
share all of these deep, dark parts of you, but when you start
pulling other people in and forcing them to share, then
you're not allowing them the freedom of their own journey the
way that they allowed it for you.
So I think that's really amazingthat you do that and that you
pay attention. And it's just not important for
him to have a presence in the online space in that way.
But what I will share, because Ithink it's hilarious, is that
(25:39):
he's a cat person. Never had a dog before he
married me. Talk about getting thrown into
the defense. Well.
It seems like he's adjusted pretty well and he's always very
thoughtful and very helpful whenit comes to taking care of from
me, so you're very lucky that headjusted quickly.
I am well, we also have the cat.That's true, you do have the
cat. We don't have to talk about her
though. Oh my gosh, cats are something
(26:00):
else. They truly are something else.
And I feel like they kind of test us in a totally different
way than dogs do. She has taught me so much,
period. I have learned so much through
having her, but she has a challenge.
They definitely are. My roommate has an orange cat
and I I've learned so much abouthow different orange cats are
(26:21):
that it's just become this little inner dialogue that I
have with myself about, well, what would the orange cat do
when it's always something way different than any of the other
cats or any of the dogs? Would do.
Yeah, I've heard that they're pretty off the wall.
They're very strange beings, that's for sure.
They're the. Alien of aliens.
Actually, we had cats in that particular housing unit.
(26:42):
We had a set number of cats thatwe were allowed to have from the
local Humane Society. When I moved into my to my cell,
there were two cats in there. I had this big cage on top of
the dog kennel, which they had to be locked up in during the
day, but then they could be out at night and on weekends with
like multiple levels, you know what I'm saying?
There was Patty, Patty, Patty's all black big girl.
(27:04):
Another was Wheaty. And Wheaty was like a tuxedo
cat, but he had these enormous savers whose tiger teeth, which
was like so wild, but he had really bad allergies and he
would sneeze and launch boogers like we would have.
We would have to like, alright, everyone, this Saturday we're
gonna be scraping Wheaties boogers off the walls.
It was disgusting. But we love these cats.
(27:26):
And Patty was mean. She was a mean cat, but we still
love them. We still love them and it was so
special to just have animals around.
Again, I'm not even a cat personand I love the rap out of these
cats because it was it was just so special and they were, they
were a constant. Once my bunkie went home, she
somehow finagled it to get the cat passed to me instead of
(27:48):
moving to the next person whose turn it actually was.
She was like, no, it's easier onthe cat for her to not move
cells. I'm like, OK, so Patty got to
stay with me and we were together for about two years
until I was transferred to the to the next institution.
And so, yeah, I think about her sometimes.
That's so cool. I like that they had that
because again, that bonding, that inner relationship with the
(28:11):
animal is so different than it is with humans, right?
And in a place like prison whereyou're already feeling bad for
being in there, you're already feeling judged for being in
there. Having a space where you have
that unconditional love and affection from something,
whether it's a dog or a cat, is so much more valuable and is
going to keep you going a littlebit.
(28:32):
And it just felt like a little normal too, just kind of like a
normal thing to take care of a cat and, you know, a litter box
and but the, you know, put the food, it just was all like they
felt very like the real world. And there's, there were a lot of
things slapping you in the face constantly to remind you that
you are not in your real, you know, your regular everyday
life. Something that I was just
thinking of that I don't think I've talked about.
(28:54):
And I don't know that it is talked about, but the particular
experience and feeling, which isnot a good feeling to be an
inmate in a prison when a tour comes through I.
Didn't know they still did that.All the time.
To be looked at in that way, talked at in that way, is very
dehumanizing. Yeah, that's that's something I
would have to sit with for a while.
(29:15):
I don't know how I would feel about that.
It's almost like the old circuses, right?
Like going to the old circuses and seeing like the freak show.
I'm saying that lightning was love, OK?
Yeah, that's exactly what it was.
And we used to joke like don't feed the monkeys.
We used to like just like put upsigns, right?
And now it wasn't a public tour where somebody could come by and
(29:35):
spend $2.00 and come and see thefreaks.
It wasn't like that. There were schools and there
were other state employees coming to do tours.
And it was, it was, it was frequent enough to be a feeling
that I remember and it not beinga good feeling.
Do you think if you hadn't been in the program with the dogs
things would have ended differently for you?
What would it have changed in your current trajectory of life?
(29:57):
I would have nothing that I haveright now without that because
that was the only thing that kept me from being completely
consumed by just all of the, thedarkness that I felt.
Because when I was originally inthat, in that place where I have
a job, anything to do again, I was sleeping in 18 hours a day,
(30:20):
which sounds really difficult until again, you, you realize
that I was taking enough medication to make that not
super difficult. I don't know that I would have
done anything, anything with that time.
And there's this phrase that there is absolutely no way that
I could pinpoint where I heard it.
And I've done no research to to know where it came from or who
said it first. But they say they say you either
(30:43):
do the time or the time does you.
And I didn't want the time to dome.
I wanted to to do something withthe time.
The fact that I lost 90 lbs while I was incarcerated is
actually like, that's not the norm.
I feel like there's there is this mental image of men going
to prison and getting really buff and that does happen.
Not for the women typically. Typically it's in the opposite
(31:07):
direction because what is available is not healthy foods.
It is very difficult to get any sort of good nutrition in that
sort of setting. In fact, the only institutional
conduct report I got at the second institution was because
they caught me with vegetables from the garden.
How dare I? How dare I try and eat healthy.
(31:27):
Yeah, it was like half a cucumber and some basil and they
they were like, what were you going to do with the basil?
I'm going to crush it up and smoke it.
What do you think I was going todo?
I was going to make Tesco. I just wanted good pasta.
I just wanted something to tastedelicious for once.
Yeah. Well, on that note, the food at
like what was supplied, which I'm not going to take away from
(31:50):
the fact that there is a certainrelief to having a place to, you
know, they call it 3 tops in thepot.
I had somewhere to sleep. I had I had food everyday,
however, it was a three-week rotation on the menu.
So it was the same stuff over and over and over and over and
over and over and over and over again.
And also I didn't do well with the food.
I had a lot of trouble keeping down and digesting and breaking
(32:14):
down the soy based products, which was a lot of what was
offered. So I just have a lot of physical
issues there. So it became important for me to
try and figure out what healthier options were
available. And it wasn't easy.
And it did it in one instance involved me with contraband
vegetables, but I got caught. I mean, I was like you got.
(32:35):
Me. Laugh about it now.
That's all that matters, right? That's all that matters.
I was about to go home. I didn't care.
I think it's hilarious. Even my Sergeant thought it was
hilarious. She was like, Scoop, you're
about to go home and you got caught with a half a cucumber.
She said you should have eaten the whole thing.
Yeah, I should have. You.
(32:56):
Know yeah, trying to think for lighter.
Hindsight, it gets us all throughout life, right?
Oh my goodness. Tell us a little bit about the
dog training program. What was it like to go through
that, and what do you think was the biggest lesson that you
learned from it? So at the first institution I
was at, the dog training programhad the three main components.
(33:16):
There was the daycare boarding for staff dogs, primarily staff
dogs. It was a big enough institution
that there were a lot of staff members of dogs.
Also. Again, any state employee could
really bring their dog. Then there was the service dog
portion, and then there was alsoa Humane Society portion, the
daycare portion. You just got assigned a dog
typically for a day or if they were boarding, you might have
(33:38):
them for a couple of days or a portion of being boarded for a
couple of days. But with the Humane Society and
the service dog work, inmates were assigned dogs on rotation.
So you might have the dog that you were the handler for that
dog for six weeks. We tried to find a good kind of
rhythm to keep the dog moving todifferent handlers to keep it
beneficial for the dog but also beneficial for a larger number
(34:02):
of the handlers to get that experience because we typically
only have like 6 shelter dogs ata time versus 50 or so daycare
dogs. So people want to be experienced
with the through dogs typically.What was your favorite rotation
to work in? Did you like having the dog all
the time or did you like gettingdifferent dogs through daycare?
So I was an odd one because whenI got there, my bunky, I'm not
(34:26):
saying that she was in charge ofanything in an official
capacity, but I got the sense that she just sort of made stuff
happen. So when she left, she, again, I
took over the cat and the dog that she'd been watching, which
is our our sergeant's dog. And so he was my regular daycare
dog, which they didn't actually have regular daycare dogs, but
because he had special medical needs, they needed him to go to
(34:48):
a consistent handler because he was there several days a week.
So my time in the daycare portion was mostly with Pepe,
who was about a million years old and did not move a lot.
And I loved with all of my heartbecause of one of my other
cellmates coming into prison andthis program with existing
(35:11):
previous skills in grooming, I also kind of got sucked into or
maybe suckered into grooming andlearning to groom from her and
then actually became a full timegroomer.
So I stopped taking daycare dogsand was grooming full time and
then also training others to groom.
I was OK, I wasn't great. I say over and over again,
(35:34):
grooming is way harder than training.
They have a way harder job than us.
But I did really enjoy my time with the Humane Society.
That was like really special to me.
My first one, his name was Adam,and he was like a chocolate lab,
but maybe like a shepherd. He kind of mixed in because he
had this like kind of cool spooky tail.
It wasn't super floofy. And he was the first reactive
(35:56):
dog I ever handled. And I was in denial.
I remember when somebody would have been there and been doing
it a lot longer than me, they said Adam's pretty reactive.
And I was like no, he's just emotional.
And I got so defensive, took it real personally.
Mind you, I'd known this dog forprobably 6 days and was just
completely rejecting that label for the longest time, which is
(36:18):
like OK, his behavior is reactive.
So therefore you know he's beinga reactive dog.
He wasn't that serious, but he ended up getting adopted by a
staff member and anytime he was in my, he would always poke his
head and be like, I was doing great and be like, yeah, it was
so I loved it. It was like that was that was
like that meant everything to me, everything to me to be able
(36:39):
to be a part of something like that.
And that's the dog that that's where I that's where I put in my
rest. If you think of your favorite
athlete out there getting in their reps, getting in their
dribbles, that was me and Adam every single day, rain or shine.
Weed shrills. Come on, bud, we can do it.
We can do it. I figured out and learned so
much working with this talk. There are so many lessons and
(37:00):
things I still use today that I can trace back to Adam in
20/17/2016 somewhere in that region.
I never really got deep into theservice work other than there
were a couple of litters that cycled through and there was one
litter of poodles and I grew pretty fond of a couple of them
and also was their groomer and also got to do like cool things.
(37:23):
So we had Viz, she was our punk rock poodle.
So we would give her a Mohawk and these little like, like
bracelets and stuff and I would carve a skull and crossbone into
her hip. And she was just, she was so
sassy. Oh my gosh.
So there are just so many dogs that you can tell as soon as I
start thinking of these dogs, I'm like, there's this one and
this one, like years and years and years later and they just
(37:44):
brought me back to life. That's just what it is, you
know. I love that.
I feel the same way about dogs. They definitely brought me back
to life. They carried me through a lot of
really hard times in my own personal journey and being able
to reflect on that. It does you do you light up that
joy comes back to you. You have all those memories and
it's it's going to to relive those moments of a not so great
(38:05):
time in your life. I know that in prison, the way
that they taught you would be more, let's say, balanced
leaning, if not totally balanced, but you have shifted
your training style and evolved it into your own unique kind of
training. Since you have come home and
started your own business, what made you decide to make that
(38:26):
shift from what you were trainedto what you decided to create on
your own? I love this question because it
kind of is a pretty clear like progression and journey for me
of the first institution that I was at.
Sure we could call it balanced. It was it was probably
compulsion training really like we were.
We were taught about about alpharoles.
(38:48):
There was another inmate who taught us something like an
alpha role. It was like more of like a, like
a, like a running tackle move, like from across the room kind
of a thing. We named it after that, didn't
he? But then at the second
institution, very positive reinforcement.
What's interesting is that they were very different educations
(39:10):
and they each existed within this little microcosm because
like we didn't have Internet. There was some TV, like some,
you know, Caesar and Brandon McMillan were on TV so you could
watch that. Both programs had book library
so you could read the books thatwere available, but other than
that, you had what you had. So I learned from what I learned
(39:30):
from and then when I was released, I almost even swung
the opposite way because that was my first experience with the
E collar, the most modern training tool, right?
All I haven't been around this. It to me felt new and
progressive and ultimately is isthe reason that I then swung in
the opposite direction because of the breakdown in relationship
(39:53):
that was caused. There was a particular
individual who I think is reallyresponsible for that in addition
to like moments that happened between me and my dog that
reflected back to me why those practices were not we're not
working for us. And she is somebody that I met
shortly after being released. She was not a trainer at the
(40:15):
time that that we met, but wanted to be a trainer and have
been doing a lot of self education.
And so when I started training, she came on to train with me and
she was a friend. And she was the colleague, and
she had the courage to call out something within my training
that she felt was not right, which is so hard to tell
(40:37):
somebody that you love, that youdon't agree with something that
they're doing. Like, that's so hard.
That's harder than if it's somebody that you don't, you
know, care about at all, Even harder than if you don't like
them. But it was something related to
using pressure and place training.
And she was totally spot on withthe fact that what I was doing
was not appropriate. But it was what she said to me
(40:57):
and the phrase that has been core to my training since, I
want to say since that day. Because the day she said it to
me, that's not the day it impacted me.
It's one of those phrases that like worms its way into your
brain and unfolds over years. And what she said was efficiency
isn't enough. Efficiency isn't everything.
And it stuck with me of like it's not.
(41:18):
And I had been treating that to be the case.
And it's really shaped a more compassionate and patient
approach. I like to say that I'm the
alternative. I'm not trying to paint any
illusions that I'm the best trainer, the only trainer,
anything like that. I'm an alternative for people
who care about the things that Icare about, for people who care
about their relationship with their doctor, care about
(41:40):
communication, who are, who are not as concerned with efficiency
as they are with how they feel about those, the methods.
Because I do believe where we'regoing, how we get there and how
we feel about how we got there. I think it, I think it all
matters. I think how we feel about the
way that we train matters. And I had a lot of a dog parents
(42:00):
say to me that they've been toldthat how they feel about the
training methods don't, that doesn't matter.
And I think that that's a real shame.
I am a human who has been deeplyin a position to have my agency
taken away and I refuse to do that to dogs any longer.
I love that. I love that very much.
It's one of the reasons that I really enjoyed working with you
is because that was one of my big things, right as I came off
(42:23):
of somebody telling me that Fitzwas too much, he was too hard,
he wasn't manageable or Hannibalpeople.
Something about me, people. Just thought about.
Me too. He's unmanageable.
Yeah, I got that a lot. But you know, put him on a prong
collar, put him on an E collar. And I did because I didn't know
better and I felt gross about itfor an entire 8 months.
(42:47):
I still, I mean, as soon as I could, all that went in the
trash. It did because I think that
there are so many better ways tomove forward with your
relationship with yourself beingintact.
It's going to help your relationship with your dog be
intact. And dogs really give you that
opportunity because they are so resilient and they do bounce
back. You give them an opportunity to
(43:08):
trust you and learn from you again.
And they're like, let's go, you know?
And unfortunately, people are not like that all the time.
There are some people that are like that, but not.
Well, we can increase our resilience and our capacity just
like dogs, but I actually find that humans are far, far more
resistant to change than dogs are.
I completely agree. What do you wish more people
(43:30):
understood about people coming out of prison or about dogs who
have been labeled too much? People coming out of prison.
I myself was was a real feral creature for a couple months.
It took me as long or longer to adjust coming out than it did
going in. It was harder to adjust coming
out than going in because I alsothen had a million real world
(43:53):
responsibilities again and was trying to sit through trauma
that I had just been living in for five years.
So people coming out of prison are at the highest risk for
recidivism, which means to go back.
And it's because, well, this is my opinion.
No, no, I mean numbers here to back this up, but it has a lot
(44:15):
to do with the support system that they have and where they're
going back to. I'm very, very blessed.
I have an incredible family and they let Farrell me live with
them for several months and really held it down for me while
I was while I was struggling. So lots of compassion and lots
of space. Halfway houses are an incredibly
important resource within our communities.
There needs to be more transitional resources.
(44:37):
There needs to be more funding for anti recidivism.
There isn't likely to be changesthere because we have for profit
prisons and people are making a lot of money off of the fact
that America incarcerates at. And here I am going to use a
number even though it could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's
like 10 times the rate of any other country, even the next
highest 1. So it's really a problem now the
(44:58):
dogs that are too much. I think that that's where we
need to look at our expectationsand we need to look at what are
we even living with here? What even is this creature you
need to be looking at at genetics and taking them
seriously and understanding thatbringing a working line dog into
a home as a pet without giving them an appropriate outlet has
(45:20):
only one ending, which is the dog being labeled as too much.
And also acknowledging the fact that we have a lot of working
lines that have now intermingledinto pet lines.
So we're seeing a lot of really,really high dried dogs as that's
in misaligned environments in a way that we didn't see at this
rate 20 years ago or whatever. So I think it's important to be
(45:42):
really honest with yourself about why you got your dog,
about what is this creature, What is the genetic drive here?
And if it's you that's labeling your dog as too much, again, get
on this with yourself. If it's other people that are
labeling your dog as too much, screw them.
Doesn't matter, right? As long as you are doing right
by your dog and meeting their needs and you're trying to
(46:04):
figure it out. I don't expect you to be
perfect. I don't expect you to get it
right every time. I expect you to be figuring it
out and keep trying every day. One foot in front of another,
that's all it is. I agree so much with that.
It really is a mind shift though.
You have to be able to move all these predetermined things
because there's so many years ofdog culture that's like do it
(46:25):
this way. Teach them to sit for this,
teach them to stay for this. Make them do this.
Make them do that leash pressureprongs, but all the things
right. There are so many people that
have learned certain ways of training that they've become
household standards that when you ask people, not trainers
people, people who have had pets, people who've had dogs,
(46:47):
what should I do? I'm struggling with this.
They're going to throw out something that they think is a
solution because they've seen iton TV, they heard about it on a
podcast, read it in a book somewhere, something like that.
It's it's popular culture to throw a solution instead of sit
down and evaluate the situation,which really sucks because it is
(47:10):
about the dog in front of you. It is about their needs and
their drives and their genetics and all of those things.
And when you're going to somebody that doesn't understand
that and asking for help, you'rereally just digging yourself
deeper into the situation instead of solution.
And it sucks that more people are not comfortable saying I
need help because we're all out here making excuse.
(47:34):
What do you think about your work today?
Mentorships, courses, unpacked dog training bites.
Out of everything, what are you most proud of?
I think it's probably a tie between two things, but if I had
to pick one, it would be my business with my training
because it's my everyday. It's where I can see what I do,
(47:56):
reflecting back to me and see the work and the relationships
that I'm building there. It's just so powerful.
It's become a part of who I am. And so I think that most proud
of, most connected to, definitely most proud of maybe I
would say is in the brand and inowning the narrative and being
at that place where I'm trying to embody free by training.
(48:20):
And then a close second would beunpacked because it really is
just something I'm really passionate about because it is
just a pure expression of me andJerry trying to help people.
That's just what it's always been.
I feel strength, wrongly, that that's going to continue to help
people. Your journey with Unpacked is
really important because it doesit, it shows you guys digging
(48:42):
deep into a case, opening it up and showing people like here's
where the mistakes were made, but here's where we've gone.
This is the things that have changed and look at how much
they've progressed. And maybe it's small because
it's, you know, a big problem ormaybe it's big because it's a
smaller problem, but you guys break it down in a way that's
easy for people to look at and understand without just throwing
(49:05):
a bunch of terminology at them. So I think that it's a really
great learning tool for pet parents.
And also, I'm so glad that you're proud of your business
like you should be. You should be proud of your
business and you should feel connected to it and you should
be proud of yourself for investing so much of yourself
into your business. And with that being said, if
somebody who is listening to this feels like they've messed
(49:27):
up way too much to be trusted again their dog with decision
they've made in their life or just in rebuilding a
relationship, what would you sayto them?
Don't think that I created this,but again, I don't know who to
credit it to, but I firmly believe that there's no going
down a road too far that you can't turn back because I've
(49:47):
been, I've been down right. I thought there was no coming
back for me. And I promise that there is.
There is always a hope for something different or something
better. You can always walk the path
that you're on differently. You can always walk a different
path always. And there are people who will
help you do that, because when you are in it, it can feel
(50:08):
impossible to see anything else,to see any other possible path
or solution. So don't be afraid to reach out
to get help. Just find somebody to just be an
inspiration in your life becauseI virtually would not be here
today had it not been for peopleas incredible beacons of light
in my life. Find those beacons.
(50:30):
Find somebody who radiates exactly what it is you want.
Madison, I am so grateful for you, for your truth, for your
work, for the way that you show up for dogs and people alike,
and of course, your friendship. Your story is one of the most
powerful examples I know of whatit means to turn your pain and
your depression and your anxietyinto your purpose.
(50:51):
And it is such a beautiful storyand I am so grateful that you
are willing to share it with us today.
What would you like to leave thelisteners?
With if you are struggling in any way with your dog or trying
to figure out the next best stepto take, because I get into that
paralysis of like what is the next right step?
We get so afraid of doing the wrong thing.
(51:13):
If you focus on communicating with your dog, you can't go
wrong. You can't go wrong.
Just focus on having clear, compassionate communication with
your dog and you can't go wrong you.
Can't go wrong, all right? Tell everybody where they can
find you, how they can work withyou, where they can connect with
you, and all of the things. Yeah, so you can go to my
website, whichisfreedbytraining.com.
(51:36):
I have a free muzzle course, which is where a lot of my
clients get started. I have behavior cases.
You can also book a free consolejust to talk about what's going
on with your dog and see what might be that next right step.
There are also some resources there, free and low cost.
You can also find me on Instagram and just DM me, let me
know what's going on with your dog.
I'm happy to chat with. Madison, thank you so much again
(51:58):
for being here. You guys be kind, spread joy,
and communicate with your dog every single day and we will see
you next week on Straight Up DogTalk.
I feel the same way about dogs. I feel like they brought me back
to life. They carried me through a lot of
really hard times in my own personal journey and being able
to reflect on that, it does you do you light up, that joy comes
back to you. You have all those memories and
it's fun to relive those momentsof a not so great time in your
life. You know that moment when
(00:28):
someone tells you your dog needsa muzzle and your stomach just
drops? If that's ever happened to you.
Just. Breathe.
You are not alone, and you're not doing anything wrong.
My guest today, Madison from Free By Training, gets it.
She's created an incredible freemuscle training course that
walks you through it step by step with kindness and clarity.
(00:49):
Whether you're navigating reactivity, safety, or just want
to do it right from the start, this course is honestly such a
gift. And if you're starting out with
a new puppy, she's got a free puppy resource bundle, too, with
everything you need to set up your dog for success without the
overwhelm. You can grab both of those and
even book a free phone consult if you're not sure what your dog
(01:10):
really needs at Freed by training.com or just tap the
link in the show notes. Seriously, don't miss out on
these. They're free and they're
actually helpful. Welcome to Straight Up Dog Talk,
the podcast that gets real aboutthe highs, the lows, and the
lessons of life with dogs. I'm your host and dog trainer,
canine nutritionist, and creatorof this space where pet parents,
(01:31):
pros, and passionate dog lovers come to feel seen, supported,
and never judged. Around here, we don't gatekeep.
We share the real conversations,honest experiences, and
practical insights that help youbuild a stronger bond with the
dog in front of you, no matter where you're starting, so you
can stop Googling and start feeling seen, supported, and
confident in the dog parent you are.
Today's guest is someone I deeply, both personally and
(01:54):
professionally admire. Madison Skoog Simpson is a dog
trainer, educator, and the founder of Freed By Training, a
mentorship space for professionals and pet parents
alike. But before all of that,
Madison's journey began in a place few people would expect
prison. During a five year sentence,
Madison found purpose, healing, and a second chance through
(02:14):
Training dogs and how she helps others find their own version of
freedom, whether they're struggling with shame, trauma,
or dogs that have been written off.
She's a friend and a mentor to me since before straight up dog
talk even existed, and I can't wait to hear this conversation.
It's about transformation, second chances, and how healing
happens often when we least expect it.
(02:34):
This episode is for you. If you ever felt stuck, ashamed,
or afraid you've messed up too much to start over, here's what
you'll take away. What it really looks like to
find purpose through pain. How training dogs helped Madison
come back to herself. How prison based dog training
programs can change lives on both ends of the leash, and why
second chances matter. What it means to own your story
(02:55):
and let go of the shame that's been holding you back in dog
training, in life and in healing.
Madison, you've shared before that you were broken with a
capital B when you went to prison.
What brought you to that point and what did healing look like
in the very beginning of your journey?
There was a lot of shame around ending up incarcerated and being
(03:18):
in that situation. And the healing that I needed to
do was very, very layered. There were relationships that
needed heal in my life, including the one with myself.
There was a lot of physical trauma that was being stored in
the body that took a long time to unravel.
(03:38):
And I know something that you and I have talked about is there
was a period of time both leading up to and then
especially in the early days of my incarceration where I was
very heavily medicated, especially for me.
And that led to a deep paralysisof, of any action of, of any
(03:59):
movement that if I had stayed there, I'd still be there.
Even out here, I'd still be there.
So that was one of the first things that I that I really had
had to move through and, and figure out was actually healing
the, the physical body to be able to even move forward from
anything else. You know, I was lost with 230
(04:21):
lbs. When I arrived to prison, I was
carrying a lot, right? Mentally and physically.
Yeah, yeah. Wow, I didn't know that about
your weight. I knew about the medications
because as you said, we've talked about our journey with
medications and both of us moving towards getting off of
medications, being over medicated by a system that we
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had no control over. And what's really, really scary
is that it happened to you whileyou were incarcerated, but it
happened to me while I was not. And I think that something that
society has normalized is that taking antidepressants and
taking things like Xanax or Lorazepam or Klonopin is normal,
right? We take our Xanax and we drink
(05:03):
our wine. But honestly, I'm not sure that
that is necessarily the right way.
If we could actually all sit down and learn how to deal with
our emotions and process them, things might look a little bit
different. How did you advocate for
yourself when it came to the medication?
I think it's important to know that I was already on medication
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prior to arriving at the prison where I spent a little bit more
than half of my, of my five yearsentence.
I believe I was on a 25 milligram dose of Zoloft.
We called it the anxiety dose and it was just, it should just
help with day-to-day anxiety. But when I arrived at the
institution that was increased to 200 and multiple other
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medications were added in. And the process of getting the
medications was, was a little bit burdensome because they're
not just going to give a bunch of controlled substances to
inmates, right? So we had to go to special.
Now you could get your allergy medications given to you in
quantity, but with these types of medications you were getting
(06:11):
just your dose administered in away that they could make sure
that you were taking it. And so the process to actually
get off of those didn't begin until after I was out of the
admissions phase when I could actually initiate a conversation
with the mental health department.
That is also kind of tricky. I didn't start that until there
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was really a catalyst. One of the medications that they
had added in there was Inderal and Elavil.
I believe it was the Elavil BB start sleepwalking When I was
released from admissions, which is like a 30 day period where
they medically clear you, assessyou for security and things like
that. I was living on a top bunk in
open housing, so there were about 300 women in one room.
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It was not safer ideal to be walking around and climbing down
off of the bunk. When I reported these side
effects, they swapped it for a difference role, which made me
start sleep eating and my neighbors the next morning told
me you were making a real racketeating a bunch of chips in the
middle of the night. And sure enough, my whole bag of
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chips was gone. I remember going to the mental
health department and expressingthese concerns.
And the response to my concerns was to hand me a list of
medication options and say, OK, what do you want then?
And that was so deeply worrying that I decided literally right
then in there, I handed the listback.
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I told them I wanted to be takenoff of the two medications that
they had added on, which I've been refusing on a nightly basis
since the sleep eating. You could go to your to your
medication dispenser and say I'mhere because you had to be
there. You get in trouble, but I'm
going to refuse this medication.And then I asked them to reduce
the dosage of the Zoloft, but they have increased and we
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slowly brought it down. And at the same time, my bunky
who during this process, I movedout of that open housing, I was
not there long. I got right into the dog
program. My bunkie signed me up for a
running program. It was a 10 weeks to 5K because
there was a prison wide 5K and she didn't ask you to sign me
(08:18):
up. So there was that.
So getting off of the medicationand sort of also getting, I
don't want to say taking control, although I think in
that moment it was like I'm going to take control in my life
wherever I can get it right now.But getting healthy and starting
those two things very much ran parallel also to the dog trains.
I made the decision to start healing and all of these
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positive things started to get aligned, even in a pretty dark
place. It's funny how that happens with
healing, right? Once we start on the path to
healing, that's when everything starts to feel like you're in
the right time, you're in the right place, and then all of the
other things that you weren't even expecting just kind of
start coming in from nowhere andyou start to change your
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attitude, you start to change your thought pattern and that
changes your whole day-to-day life.
What shifts did you notice afteryou made that intention to get
healthier and get off the medication?
Yes, again, all of these things and maybe maybe it's just
blurred because time has passed at this point, but the
beginnings are kind of tied together.
(09:21):
Getting into the dog program because I had to apply and be
accepted to get into the dog program because it was
considered honors housing. The shift was in no way subtle
because I went from being overlymedicated, sleeping 18 hours a
day. I had been assigned a job that I
went to once and they were like,we don't need you, but we're not
going to reclassify. You go and sleep away your five
(09:44):
years to basically boot camp. You were up, your bed was made
in a very specific way. There were rules against cussing
from basically 6:00 or 7:00 AM until 4:00 PM, and you were in a
very certain place at a very certain time, and you were
working. Like I said, it wasn't subtle.
It was like complete upheaval ofwhat I had come to know.
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But I hadn't been there for verylong.
October was when I arrived and so I spent 30 days in
admissions. And so November, December,
January, February, like three, 3-4 months was all I spent in
that open style housing, which was tough.
And then being moved back into an area where not only was it an
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environment change, it was the same present.
It was the same institution, butit was a very different culture.
And I was surrounded by other people that that also had a
desire to do something more thanjust sleep away.
Five years, right. So that was massively impactful
to be around people who signed you up for five days without
asking. Were you surprised that there
was such a big difference between where you left and where
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you went to? Did you notice that was the case
in other areas of dormitory situations as well?
Or do you think it was just because you had to be so on
schedule because of the dogs? The first institution that I was
at, it was pretty large. It's the largest women's prison
in Ohio. I'm like 3600 women.
So there were a lot of little pockets of different cultures.
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Now things have changed. Even while I was there, they
demolished buildings and built new ones and they've, they've,
they've done that since I've since I've been there.
So things have definitely changed.
But when I was there, there was one building in particular that
I know is no longer there that was called Lincoln.
And that's where they housed 2 things in particular.
The 1st is the Greyhound program, which is not the
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program that was a part of. The second is this was the
dedicated location for inmates with life sentences.
So that has a very particular culture to it.
And those two things are not unrelated.
The greyhound program was run bylifers.
All of those dogs were there to just learn how to become dogs
and be pets and it was really, really beautiful.
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But our program was different because we had all of this
structure and it was a business.It was the self-sustaining
business of the daycare and services for the staff, state
employees really, as well as theservice dog in the Humane
Society. So yeah, there were lots of
pockets of cultures that I was aware of.
And even before I was released from admissions, you would hear
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from other inmates like, oh, youdon't want to pop out to this
unit or off the chain, right? Or you really want to end up
over here. And the building that I was in
that was this big open Bay was called Hale Hale.
But everyone feel like oh Hale, nobody really wanted to end up
there. OK, so tell us a little bit
about those first few weeks. What was it like?
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What shifted for you after you started training dogs and
learning about training dogs? I think people maybe think I'm
joking about this when I say that when I first started
trading dogs, they didn't let ushave a dog for 30 days.
I walked a leash with no dog on the end of it for 30 days.
Now, if I had somebody with me observing as my mentor, as my
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buddy, actively working with me,I was allowed to have a real
dog. But there was a lot of
preparation, there was a lot of education.
There was a 10 week curriculum and you had to go through these
ten weeks of classes and at the end of each week take an exam.
And at the end of the 10 weeks, you needed an 80% average to be
able to pass. Otherwise you went back in and
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you started and you needed all of this to be able to come an
actual handler because again, wewere entrusted with the dogs of
the state employees. Now, this could be corrections
officers, unit managers, HighwayPatrol officers, wardens of
other prisons, and they needed to be sure that we knew what we
were doing. And there was a high volume of
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dogs, 40 or 50 or more on a daycare day of just the staff
dogs. So it was a lot of chaos too, of
getting on this new rhythm, and it kicked my butt.
I remember the first couple of days sleeping so hard at the end
of the day and remember it was so different from the sleep that
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I had been sleeping, which was just, I'm super medicated.
I'm reading Game of Thrones during my only waking hours and
I'm just sleepy and I'm bored. This was like I worked myself to
the bone because for an hour in the morning, an hour in the
afternoon, everybody lines up and they walk and they walk.
And if you don't have a dog, you're a spacer in between
people with dogs. And you walk, walk, and you walk
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and you walk and you walk. And the rest of the day we were
in classes learning, or we were in training circle, which is
where you circle up with the dogs and there's a collar in the
middle calling out. Have your dogs sit, praise them,
have them stay, take three stepsaway, call them to you.
And it was just really hard. And I remember not being sure if
I would make it if I would last because there were so many rules
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on top of there being institutional rules that if you
had a corrections officer write you up a conduct report on an
institutional rule that can go against early release or
something like that. Very important.
So you have those. And then back in these honor
dorms, you also have these interlocks that are assigned
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inmate to inmate by inmates who are in positions of authority
within the hierarchy of the unitand the structure, because we
had housing advisors, hallway advisors, program advisors.
And so if you got, I think five of those interlocks in the 19
day period back out to general population and some of them were
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if your bed was not made properly or if they heard you
cussing on the yard, they could write you an interlock.
So it was just a lot. I remember thinking like this is
so much like what if I can't keep up?
I don't want to go back there. I want to be here with the dogs.
It also felt very private because they were four man
cells. So compared to having 299
roommates, I only had three roommates and that felt great.
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That felt like a huge improvement.
We had our own toilet that was also very, very, very big deal.
Big deal. Yeah, very, very big deal.
I mean, no privacy because the toilet was just right there.
But it was still better than having to share 10 toilets with
300 women. That would be very difficult for
me. I like my privacy when it comes
to the bathroom. That would be very hard for me.
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And the walls where I was beforewhere the toilets were in a
separate area, it wasn't even private because the walls only
came up to about here so you could just look and be like the
person right next to you. Get comfy with being.
Uncomfortable. I made best friends with being
uncomfortable. That's just the truth of it is
you get used to that very, very quickly.
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Comfort is not something that was promised in the
incarceration experience. And so I can't grab it where you
can find it. And if that means it's having
that that much more privacy within where you're residing
that I was willing to work to tokeep hold of that.
What do you think those years ofworking with dogs inside the
prison taught you about responsibility, connection and
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self love? Responsibility, connection and
self love. You know, I have lost a lot of
things, a lot of qualities I think throughout the process
just leading up to that time. But I've always been a
responsibility, responsible person.
I've always taken responsibility, taken
accountability and ownership. And I don't feel like that ever
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got got lost in the process. In fact, I feel like that was
magnified in the process. The ultimate taking of
accountability for your actions.But on the opposite end,
connection is something I had leading up to going to prison.
I spent as much time as I could building up as many walls as I
could, saying to myself, you're not going to be friends, you're
not going to let anybody in. You're going to be so tough.
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And so I was very against reallymaking any connections in there,
but that's exactly what the dogswere.
They were the easiest thing in the world to connect with.
Now self love came a long time later that that that's really
like a more a more recent learning in my life.
But at that point I was still sodeep in the opposite end of that
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spectrum, which is self clothing.
So dogs were absolutely instrumental to the very
beginning stages of crawling or claw falling out of that
particular pit. But they made me give out love
every day in a place where I didn't expect to.
And that was an important to start getting into, to be able
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to then receive it again and to be able to then have that
connection. So of course, of course dogs for
me are part of of everything, ofall parts of my journey and all
parts of the story. But the self love, I think, like
I said came came much later. People think that you have to be
perfect to work with dogs, but you found working with dogs
through imperfection. What did it teach you?
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I'm still learning this one because even recently people
have said to me, oh, I thought you had it all together.
And I'm like, really? Because my whole life was on
fire last year. What I want to say is that the
current lesson that I'm learningis to show up in the
imperfection, because perfectionwas never the goal anyway.
Nobody wants that. Nobody cares about that.
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And to show up in your imperfection is to be willing to
be vulnerable enough to make space for other people to show
up as they are. And it's so important.
I was talking about this with Jerry the other day about the
need to just be vulnerable. And there were things that I was
admitting that were happening, right?
Like Remy ate a cookie, ate halfof the chocolate chip cookie.
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And traders don't want to admit that that their dogs do things
like that. And we just, we just have to be
willing to show up imperfectly. Otherwise we're not going to be
approachable and we're not goingto help people.
And that's the first step, right, is for people to come
into our worlds and to be ready for help and to be honest with
us about what's really going on.And if we're not being honest
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and they can't, that doesn't createspace safe space for them
to do that. Either I completely agree with
that. I think that it's better to show
up authentically and. Messily and say hey, I had all
these bad things happen to me orwe've had these bad experiences.
I posted a reel the other day about Fitz having a reaction in
the front yard and I shared it because I want people to see it
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doesn't matter how long you've been working on a thing, stuff
still happens. You cannot control everything.
There is no perfection when it comes with dogs.
And to expect that, like you said, it's completely
unrealistic. And also, who wants a statue for
a dog? Not me, not me.
If you do you could have just gotten the statue right like
they have. They have dog statues.
(20:37):
You don't. You don't need to get a live 1
then they also. Get a stuff one.
Yeah, there are great alternatives.
Pet Rocks are great company for the right person.
But just like a fish, but you don't have to feed it.
Exactly. For some people, Pet Rock is
exactly what they're probably looking for in terms of the
amount of care that they wouldn't put into it.
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They got very honest with themselves.
My gosh, how did you learn to own your story without shame?
Since we're talking about that, I know that this was a journey
for you, and I know that you've had a lot of support and
encouragement from people like Jerry, from people like me, from
other people saying, you know what?
We're out here trying to do the same thing.
You should do it too. But what was the real tipping
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point for you? So I want to talk about the
people that were the opposite ofthat positive influence and the
fact that there were a couple ofinfluences that were very much
encouraging me to keep things inthe dark.
And this is part of the reason why the brand, the dog training
business that I had created and spent a period of time building
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oriented to the ground. And what I, what I built from
from those ashes was was breed by training.
And even though it wasn't right in that moment that I came out
to tell my story, that was, thatwas the big moment of like, this
is who I am, barbed wire and thelogo and everything, right?
Like it felt like such a bold statement, but it was because of
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being told to keep it a secret. And I remember there was, there
was a trainer that, that wanted me to come and work for them.
And they said to me when they found out that I was getting
married, that it was a great opportunity to change my name
and that if it were them, they would have done it the second
they got out. And I decided then and there
that I was not going to be changing my last name because
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I'm, I'm proud of my family and my parents and where I'm from.
And even though there's a dark part of my story, I'm not
willing to build anything aroundtrying to keep something a
secret. And I did, I did try and keep it
a secret for the first several years of my training.
And I was exhausted, constantly afraid that my clients were
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going to figure me out, Google me, right?
Something like that. And it was very, very scary.
And I chose just not to have it have that hold on me anymore.
I wanted to own the narrative. I wanted it to be something that
I could talk about, and it's taking years of practice to be
where I am now of being able to talk about it.
But you're absolutely right, there have been so many people
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to shed light on it. Jerry is my ultimate safe space
for stuff like that because she and I have both taken the dark
night of the soul thing pretty much as far as it'll go.
Somebody who I don't talk about a lot, and it's not for lack of
love but for an overabundance ofrespect for privacy, is my to
your husband, who is my rock, mybiggest hype person, my best
(23:32):
friend, and is just think of themost supportive person in the
world. And he's at times 10 so.
And again, it's not for lack of love that he's not super present
on my social media. That's how he prefers it.
And he prefers the yearly birthday and anniversary shout
outs and that's about it. Yeah, it's not been easy to get
to this point of being able to talk about it in this way.
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And even still, I get scared sometimes.
I care far less about being comfortable than I do about
reaching people who could like actually change their lives with
something that I might be able to share and that that's just so
much more important to me. And like I said, I made besties
with being uncomfortable. So just comfort.
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And I, we do just fine. So any discomfort that I feel
from having to talk about hard things is just nothing compared
to the messages that I get from people that say that they feel
safe and they feel seen and theyare ready to give out or receive
a second chance somewhere in their life.
I love that. I also love that you keep your
relationship with your husband. I won't say his name.
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I know that you've posted it on social media before, but I won't
say it even though I know what it is out of respect for him.
But I love that you keep that private because I don't
personally have anybody in my life right now.
But if I did, I would be the same way because I think that
there's a point to our vulnerability, to our sharing,
to our being transparent. That is our part of the journey.
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But there are also other parts where our family is involved or
our loved one is involved, our partner, our sister or brother,
whatever. And maybe they don't want to be
part of that public aspect. And so I think that it's really
important to know where the boundary is when it comes to
sharing and over sharing. Because I think that you can
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share all of these deep, dark parts of you, but when you start
pulling other people in and forcing them to share, then
you're not allowing them the freedom of their own journey the
way that they allowed it for you.
So I think that's really amazingthat you do that and that you
pay attention. And it's just not important for
him to have a presence in the online space in that way.
But what I will share, because Ithink it's hilarious, is that
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he's a cat person. Never had a dog before he
married me. Talk about getting thrown into
the defense. Well.
It seems like he's adjusted pretty well and he's always very
thoughtful and very helpful whenit comes to taking care of from
me, so you're very lucky that headjusted quickly.
I am well, we also have the cat.That's true, you do have the
cat. We don't have to talk about her
though. Oh my gosh, cats are something
(26:00):
else. They truly are something else.
And I feel like they kind of test us in a totally different
way than dogs do. She has taught me so much,
period. I have learned so much through
having her, but she has a challenge.
They definitely are. My roommate has an orange cat
and I I've learned so much abouthow different orange cats are
(26:21):
that it's just become this little inner dialogue that I
have with myself about, well, what would the orange cat do
when it's always something way different than any of the other
cats or any of the dogs? Would do.
Yeah, I've heard that they're pretty off the wall.
They're very strange beings, that's for sure.
They're the. Alien of aliens.
Actually, we had cats in that particular housing unit.
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We had a set number of cats thatwe were allowed to have from the
local Humane Society. When I moved into my to my cell,
there were two cats in there. I had this big cage on top of
the dog kennel, which they had to be locked up in during the
day, but then they could be out at night and on weekends with
like multiple levels, you know what I'm saying?
There was Patty, Patty, Patty's all black big girl.
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Another was Wheaty. And Wheaty was like a tuxedo
cat, but he had these enormous savers whose tiger teeth, which
was like so wild, but he had really bad allergies and he
would sneeze and launch boogers like we would have.
We would have to like, alright, everyone, this Saturday we're
gonna be scraping Wheaties boogers off the walls.
It was disgusting. But we love these cats.
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And Patty was mean. She was a mean cat, but we still
love them. We still love them and it was so
special to just have animals around.
Again, I'm not even a cat personand I love the rap out of these
cats because it was it was just so special and they were, they
were a constant. Once my bunkie went home, she
somehow finagled it to get the cat passed to me instead of
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moving to the next person whose turn it actually was.
She was like, no, it's easier onthe cat for her to not move
cells. I'm like, OK, so Patty got to
stay with me and we were together for about two years
until I was transferred to the to the next institution.
And so, yeah, I think about her sometimes.
That's so cool. I like that they had that
because again, that bonding, that inner relationship with the
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animal is so different than it is with humans, right?
And in a place like prison whereyou're already feeling bad for
being in there, you're already feeling judged for being in
there. Having a space where you have
that unconditional love and affection from something,
whether it's a dog or a cat, is so much more valuable and is
going to keep you going a littlebit.
(28:32):
And it just felt like a little normal too, just kind of like a
normal thing to take care of a cat and, you know, a litter box
and but the, you know, put the food, it just was all like they
felt very like the real world. And there's, there were a lot of
things slapping you in the face constantly to remind you that
you are not in your real, you know, your regular everyday
life. Something that I was just
thinking of that I don't think I've talked about.
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And I don't know that it is talked about, but the particular
experience and feeling, which isnot a good feeling to be an
inmate in a prison when a tour comes through I.
Didn't know they still did that.All the time.
To be looked at in that way, talked at in that way, is very
dehumanizing. Yeah, that's that's something I
would have to sit with for a while.
(29:15):
I don't know how I would feel about that.
It's almost like the old circuses, right?
Like going to the old circuses and seeing like the freak show.
I'm saying that lightning was love, OK?
Yeah, that's exactly what it was.
And we used to joke like don't feed the monkeys.
We used to like just like put upsigns, right?
And now it wasn't a public tour where somebody could come by and
(29:35):
spend $2.00 and come and see thefreaks.
It wasn't like that. There were schools and there
were other state employees coming to do tours.
And it was, it was, it was frequent enough to be a feeling
that I remember and it not beinga good feeling.
Do you think if you hadn't been in the program with the dogs
things would have ended differently for you?
What would it have changed in your current trajectory of life?
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I would have nothing that I haveright now without that because
that was the only thing that kept me from being completely
consumed by just all of the, thedarkness that I felt.
Because when I was originally inthat, in that place where I have
a job, anything to do again, I was sleeping in 18 hours a day,
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which sounds really difficult until again, you, you realize
that I was taking enough medication to make that not
super difficult. I don't know that I would have
done anything, anything with that time.
And there's this phrase that there is absolutely no way that
I could pinpoint where I heard it.
And I've done no research to to know where it came from or who
said it first. But they say they say you either
(30:43):
do the time or the time does you.
And I didn't want the time to dome.
I wanted to to do something withthe time.
The fact that I lost 90 lbs while I was incarcerated is
actually like, that's not the norm.
I feel like there's there is this mental image of men going
to prison and getting really buff and that does happen.
Not for the women typically. Typically it's in the opposite
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direction because what is available is not healthy foods.
It is very difficult to get any sort of good nutrition in that
sort of setting. In fact, the only institutional
conduct report I got at the second institution was because
they caught me with vegetables from the garden.
How dare I? How dare I try and eat healthy.
(31:27):
Yeah, it was like half a cucumber and some basil and they
they were like, what were you going to do with the basil?
I'm going to crush it up and smoke it.
What do you think I was going todo?
I was going to make Tesco. I just wanted good pasta.
I just wanted something to tastedelicious for once.
Yeah. Well, on that note, the food at
like what was supplied, which I'm not going to take away from
(31:50):
the fact that there is a certainrelief to having a place to, you
know, they call it 3 tops in thepot.
I had somewhere to sleep. I had I had food everyday,
however, it was a three-week rotation on the menu.
So it was the same stuff over and over and over and over and
over and over and over and over again.
And also I didn't do well with the food.
I had a lot of trouble keeping down and digesting and breaking
(32:14):
down the soy based products, which was a lot of what was
offered. So I just have a lot of physical
issues there. So it became important for me to
try and figure out what healthier options were
available. And it wasn't easy.
And it did it in one instance involved me with contraband
vegetables, but I got caught. I mean, I was like you got.
(32:35):
Me. Laugh about it now.
That's all that matters, right? That's all that matters.
I was about to go home. I didn't care.
I think it's hilarious. Even my Sergeant thought it was
hilarious. She was like, Scoop, you're
about to go home and you got caught with a half a cucumber.
She said you should have eaten the whole thing.
Yeah, I should have. You.
(32:56):
Know yeah, trying to think for lighter.
Hindsight, it gets us all throughout life, right?
Oh my goodness. Tell us a little bit about the
dog training program. What was it like to go through
that, and what do you think was the biggest lesson that you
learned from it? So at the first institution I
was at, the dog training programhad the three main components.
(33:16):
There was the daycare boarding for staff dogs, primarily staff
dogs. It was a big enough institution
that there were a lot of staff members of dogs.
Also. Again, any state employee could
really bring their dog. Then there was the service dog
portion, and then there was alsoa Humane Society portion, the
daycare portion. You just got assigned a dog
typically for a day or if they were boarding, you might have
(33:38):
them for a couple of days or a portion of being boarded for a
couple of days. But with the Humane Society and
the service dog work, inmates were assigned dogs on rotation.
So you might have the dog that you were the handler for that
dog for six weeks. We tried to find a good kind of
rhythm to keep the dog moving todifferent handlers to keep it
beneficial for the dog but also beneficial for a larger number
(34:02):
of the handlers to get that experience because we typically
only have like 6 shelter dogs ata time versus 50 or so daycare
dogs. So people want to be experienced
with the through dogs typically.What was your favorite rotation
to work in? Did you like having the dog all
the time or did you like gettingdifferent dogs through daycare?
So I was an odd one because whenI got there, my bunky, I'm not
(34:26):
saying that she was in charge ofanything in an official
capacity, but I got the sense that she just sort of made stuff
happen. So when she left, she, again, I
took over the cat and the dog that she'd been watching, which
is our our sergeant's dog. And so he was my regular daycare
dog, which they didn't actually have regular daycare dogs, but
because he had special medical needs, they needed him to go to
(34:48):
a consistent handler because he was there several days a week.
So my time in the daycare portion was mostly with Pepe,
who was about a million years old and did not move a lot.
And I loved with all of my heartbecause of one of my other
cellmates coming into prison andthis program with existing
(35:11):
previous skills in grooming, I also kind of got sucked into or
maybe suckered into grooming andlearning to groom from her and
then actually became a full timegroomer.
So I stopped taking daycare dogsand was grooming full time and
then also training others to groom.
I was OK, I wasn't great. I say over and over again,
(35:34):
grooming is way harder than training.
They have a way harder job than us.
But I did really enjoy my time with the Humane Society.
That was like really special to me.
My first one, his name was Adam,and he was like a chocolate lab,
but maybe like a shepherd. He kind of mixed in because he
had this like kind of cool spooky tail.
It wasn't super floofy. And he was the first reactive
(35:56):
dog I ever handled. And I was in denial.
I remember when somebody would have been there and been doing
it a lot longer than me, they said Adam's pretty reactive.
And I was like no, he's just emotional.
And I got so defensive, took it real personally.
Mind you, I'd known this dog forprobably 6 days and was just
completely rejecting that label for the longest time, which is
(36:18):
like OK, his behavior is reactive.
So therefore you know he's beinga reactive dog.
He wasn't that serious, but he ended up getting adopted by a
staff member and anytime he was in my, he would always poke his
head and be like, I was doing great and be like, yeah, it was
so I loved it. It was like that was that was
like that meant everything to me, everything to me to be able
(36:39):
to be a part of something like that.
And that's the dog that that's where I that's where I put in my
rest. If you think of your favorite
athlete out there getting in their reps, getting in their
dribbles, that was me and Adam every single day, rain or shine.
Weed shrills. Come on, bud, we can do it.
We can do it. I figured out and learned so
much working with this talk. There are so many lessons and
(37:00):
things I still use today that I can trace back to Adam in
20/17/2016 somewhere in that region.
I never really got deep into theservice work other than there
were a couple of litters that cycled through and there was one
litter of poodles and I grew pretty fond of a couple of them
and also was their groomer and also got to do like cool things.
(37:23):
So we had Viz, she was our punk rock poodle.
So we would give her a Mohawk and these little like, like
bracelets and stuff and I would carve a skull and crossbone into
her hip. And she was just, she was so
sassy. Oh my gosh.
So there are just so many dogs that you can tell as soon as I
start thinking of these dogs, I'm like, there's this one and
this one, like years and years and years later and they just
(37:44):
brought me back to life. That's just what it is, you
know. I love that.
I feel the same way about dogs. They definitely brought me back
to life. They carried me through a lot of
really hard times in my own personal journey and being able
to reflect on that. It does you do you light up that
joy comes back to you. You have all those memories and
it's it's going to to relive those moments of a not so great
(38:05):
time in your life. I know that in prison, the way
that they taught you would be more, let's say, balanced
leaning, if not totally balanced, but you have shifted
your training style and evolved it into your own unique kind of
training. Since you have come home and
started your own business, what made you decide to make that
(38:26):
shift from what you were trainedto what you decided to create on
your own? I love this question because it
kind of is a pretty clear like progression and journey for me
of the first institution that I was at.
Sure we could call it balanced. It was it was probably
compulsion training really like we were.
We were taught about about alpharoles.
(38:48):
There was another inmate who taught us something like an
alpha role. It was like more of like a, like
a, like a running tackle move, like from across the room kind
of a thing. We named it after that, didn't
he? But then at the second
institution, very positive reinforcement.
What's interesting is that they were very different educations
(39:10):
and they each existed within this little microcosm because
like we didn't have Internet. There was some TV, like some,
you know, Caesar and Brandon McMillan were on TV so you could
watch that. Both programs had book library
so you could read the books thatwere available, but other than
that, you had what you had. So I learned from what I learned
(39:30):
from and then when I was released, I almost even swung
the opposite way because that was my first experience with the
E collar, the most modern training tool, right?
All I haven't been around this. It to me felt new and
progressive and ultimately is isthe reason that I then swung in
the opposite direction because of the breakdown in relationship
(39:53):
that was caused. There was a particular
individual who I think is reallyresponsible for that in addition
to like moments that happened between me and my dog that
reflected back to me why those practices were not we're not
working for us. And she is somebody that I met
shortly after being released. She was not a trainer at the
(40:15):
time that that we met, but wanted to be a trainer and have
been doing a lot of self education.
And so when I started training, she came on to train with me and
she was a friend. And she was the colleague, and
she had the courage to call out something within my training
that she felt was not right, which is so hard to tell
(40:37):
somebody that you love, that youdon't agree with something that
they're doing. Like, that's so hard.
That's harder than if it's somebody that you don't, you
know, care about at all, Even harder than if you don't like
them. But it was something related to
using pressure and place training.
And she was totally spot on withthe fact that what I was doing
was not appropriate. But it was what she said to me
(40:57):
and the phrase that has been core to my training since, I
want to say since that day. Because the day she said it to
me, that's not the day it impacted me.
It's one of those phrases that like worms its way into your
brain and unfolds over years. And what she said was efficiency
isn't enough. Efficiency isn't everything.
And it stuck with me of like it's not.
(41:18):
And I had been treating that to be the case.
And it's really shaped a more compassionate and patient
approach. I like to say that I'm the
alternative. I'm not trying to paint any
illusions that I'm the best trainer, the only trainer,
anything like that. I'm an alternative for people
who care about the things that Icare about, for people who care
about their relationship with their doctor, care about
(41:40):
communication, who are, who are not as concerned with efficiency
as they are with how they feel about those, the methods.
Because I do believe where we'regoing, how we get there and how
we feel about how we got there. I think it, I think it all
matters. I think how we feel about the
way that we train matters. And I had a lot of a dog parents
(42:00):
say to me that they've been toldthat how they feel about the
training methods don't, that doesn't matter.
And I think that that's a real shame.
I am a human who has been deeplyin a position to have my agency
taken away and I refuse to do that to dogs any longer.
I love that. I love that very much.
It's one of the reasons that I really enjoyed working with you
is because that was one of my big things, right as I came off
(42:23):
of somebody telling me that Fitzwas too much, he was too hard,
he wasn't manageable or Hannibalpeople.
Something about me, people. Just thought about.
Me too. He's unmanageable.
Yeah, I got that a lot. But you know, put him on a prong
collar, put him on an E collar. And I did because I didn't know
better and I felt gross about itfor an entire 8 months.
(42:47):
I still, I mean, as soon as I could, all that went in the
trash. It did because I think that
there are so many better ways tomove forward with your
relationship with yourself beingintact.
It's going to help your relationship with your dog be
intact. And dogs really give you that
opportunity because they are so resilient and they do bounce
back. You give them an opportunity to
(43:08):
trust you and learn from you again.
And they're like, let's go, you know?
And unfortunately, people are not like that all the time.
There are some people that are like that, but not.
Well, we can increase our resilience and our capacity just
like dogs, but I actually find that humans are far, far more
resistant to change than dogs are.
I completely agree. What do you wish more people
(43:30):
understood about people coming out of prison or about dogs who
have been labeled too much? People coming out of prison.
I myself was was a real feral creature for a couple months.
It took me as long or longer to adjust coming out than it did
going in. It was harder to adjust coming
out than going in because I alsothen had a million real world
(43:53):
responsibilities again and was trying to sit through trauma
that I had just been living in for five years.
So people coming out of prison are at the highest risk for
recidivism, which means to go back.
And it's because, well, this is my opinion.
No, no, I mean numbers here to back this up, but it has a lot
(44:15):
to do with the support system that they have and where they're
going back to. I'm very, very blessed.
I have an incredible family and they let Farrell me live with
them for several months and really held it down for me while
I was while I was struggling. So lots of compassion and lots
of space. Halfway houses are an incredibly
important resource within our communities.
There needs to be more transitional resources.
(44:37):
There needs to be more funding for anti recidivism.
There isn't likely to be changesthere because we have for profit
prisons and people are making a lot of money off of the fact
that America incarcerates at. And here I am going to use a
number even though it could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's
like 10 times the rate of any other country, even the next
highest 1. So it's really a problem now the
(44:58):
dogs that are too much. I think that that's where we
need to look at our expectationsand we need to look at what are
we even living with here? What even is this creature you
need to be looking at at genetics and taking them
seriously and understanding thatbringing a working line dog into
a home as a pet without giving them an appropriate outlet has
(45:20):
only one ending, which is the dog being labeled as too much.
And also acknowledging the fact that we have a lot of working
lines that have now intermingledinto pet lines.
So we're seeing a lot of really,really high dried dogs as that's
in misaligned environments in a way that we didn't see at this
rate 20 years ago or whatever. So I think it's important to be
(45:42):
really honest with yourself about why you got your dog,
about what is this creature, What is the genetic drive here?
And if it's you that's labeling your dog as too much, again, get
on this with yourself. If it's other people that are
labeling your dog as too much, screw them.
Doesn't matter, right? As long as you are doing right
by your dog and meeting their needs and you're trying to
(46:04):
figure it out. I don't expect you to be
perfect. I don't expect you to get it
right every time. I expect you to be figuring it
out and keep trying every day. One foot in front of another,
that's all it is. I agree so much with that.
It really is a mind shift though.
You have to be able to move all these predetermined things
because there's so many years ofdog culture that's like do it
(46:25):
this way. Teach them to sit for this,
teach them to stay for this. Make them do this.
Make them do that leash pressureprongs, but all the things
right. There are so many people that
have learned certain ways of training that they've become
household standards that when you ask people, not trainers
people, people who have had pets, people who've had dogs,
(46:47):
what should I do? I'm struggling with this.
They're going to throw out something that they think is a
solution because they've seen iton TV, they heard about it on a
podcast, read it in a book somewhere, something like that.
It's it's popular culture to throw a solution instead of sit
down and evaluate the situation,which really sucks because it is
(47:10):
about the dog in front of you. It is about their needs and
their drives and their genetics and all of those things.
And when you're going to somebody that doesn't understand
that and asking for help, you'rereally just digging yourself
deeper into the situation instead of solution.
And it sucks that more people are not comfortable saying I
need help because we're all out here making excuse.
(47:34):
What do you think about your work today?
Mentorships, courses, unpacked dog training bites.
Out of everything, what are you most proud of?
I think it's probably a tie between two things, but if I had
to pick one, it would be my business with my training
because it's my everyday. It's where I can see what I do,
(47:56):
reflecting back to me and see the work and the relationships
that I'm building there. It's just so powerful.
It's become a part of who I am. And so I think that most proud
of, most connected to, definitely most proud of maybe I
would say is in the brand and inowning the narrative and being
at that place where I'm trying to embody free by training.
(48:20):
And then a close second would beunpacked because it really is
just something I'm really passionate about because it is
just a pure expression of me andJerry trying to help people.
That's just what it's always been.
I feel strength, wrongly, that that's going to continue to help
people. Your journey with Unpacked is
really important because it doesit, it shows you guys digging
(48:42):
deep into a case, opening it up and showing people like here's
where the mistakes were made, but here's where we've gone.
This is the things that have changed and look at how much
they've progressed. And maybe it's small because
it's, you know, a big problem ormaybe it's big because it's a
smaller problem, but you guys break it down in a way that's
easy for people to look at and understand without just throwing
(49:05):
a bunch of terminology at them. So I think that it's a really
great learning tool for pet parents.
And also, I'm so glad that you're proud of your business
like you should be. You should be proud of your
business and you should feel connected to it and you should
be proud of yourself for investing so much of yourself
into your business. And with that being said, if
somebody who is listening to this feels like they've messed
(49:27):
up way too much to be trusted again their dog with decision
they've made in their life or just in rebuilding a
relationship, what would you sayto them?
Don't think that I created this,but again, I don't know who to
credit it to, but I firmly believe that there's no going
down a road too far that you can't turn back because I've
(49:47):
been, I've been down right. I thought there was no coming
back for me. And I promise that there is.
There is always a hope for something different or something
better. You can always walk the path
that you're on differently. You can always walk a different
path always. And there are people who will
help you do that, because when you are in it, it can feel
(50:08):
impossible to see anything else,to see any other possible path
or solution. So don't be afraid to reach out
to get help. Just find somebody to just be an
inspiration in your life becauseI virtually would not be here
today had it not been for peopleas incredible beacons of light
in my life. Find those beacons.
(50:30):
Find somebody who radiates exactly what it is you want.
Madison, I am so grateful for you, for your truth, for your
work, for the way that you show up for dogs and people alike,
and of course, your friendship. Your story is one of the most
powerful examples I know of whatit means to turn your pain and
your depression and your anxietyinto your purpose.
(50:51):
And it is such a beautiful storyand I am so grateful that you
are willing to share it with us today.
What would you like to leave thelisteners?
With if you are struggling in any way with your dog or trying
to figure out the next best stepto take, because I get into that
paralysis of like what is the next right step?
We get so afraid of doing the wrong thing.
(51:13):
If you focus on communicating with your dog, you can't go
wrong. You can't go wrong.
Just focus on having clear, compassionate communication with
your dog and you can't go wrong you.
Can't go wrong, all right? Tell everybody where they can
find you, how they can work withyou, where they can connect with
you, and all of the things. Yeah, so you can go to my
website, whichisfreedbytraining.com.
(51:36):
I have a free muzzle course, which is where a lot of my
clients get started. I have behavior cases.
You can also book a free consolejust to talk about what's going
on with your dog and see what might be that next right step.
There are also some resources there, free and low cost.
You can also find me on Instagram and just DM me, let me
know what's going on with your dog.
I'm happy to chat with. Madison, thank you so much again
(51:58):
for being here. You guys be kind, spread joy,
and communicate with your dog every single day and we will see
you next week on Straight Up DogTalk.
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