The SFTD origin story in "How We Got By" (Plus: Enter to win a "Hot Dog Trainer" Mug)

Annie reads from How We Got By, a new book by Shaina Feinberg & Julia Rothman which includes a chapter about how School For The Dogs got started. She also gives an update on the bizarre/sad Dog Daddy world tour, and shares how excited she got when she first read about a man being called "the hot dog trainer." Who was the handsome fella?

Get How We Got By on Amazon

Instagram

Transcript

This transcript was made automatically from the audio, so it may contain small errors.

Hello humans, Annie Grossman here of School For The Dogs on what was formerly known as School For The Dogs podcast. Now known as How To Train Your Dog With Love and Science, I just finished editing next week's episode, which I'm excited to share with you. It is an interview with Zach George about Dog Daddy. The so-called trainer who I spoke about a few weeks ago. And it's almost like it's almost like a joke.

It's like it seems like an SNL parody, like an extreme of terrible or something, almost to the point of being funny. But it's not funny because this dude is. Basically abusing dogs and calling it dog training and claiming that he was born with innate dogginess. We've seen this before. I think the apex of the craziness was a video I saw the other day, which actually did not have any dogs in it.

No dogs were being abused in this video, thank goodness. It was one of his graduating classes. You know, seminars where he trains you to become a professional dog trainer in four hours. And he was graduating this class and so they're all there standing there holding their diplomas And he hands each one of them a prong collar. And then he hands each one of them a hot dog, like a hot dog in a bun.

And this is kind of like his own little meme about how ridiculous it is that anyone would think that you could train using hot dogs, I guess. Like it's like a stereotype of like the positive reinforcement trainer. If you don't have hot dogs on you, then what happens? It's just like, what is this world that we're living in? There's so many things that are so nuts.

But on the subject of hot dogs, what's funny is when I first started sort of keeping track of This drama going on, I saw that Dog Daddy kept referring to the hot dog trainer, and I was like, who? Who is this hot dog trainer guy? I must know. And then at some point I put it together that it was like, oh, hot dog trainer. And then I realized it was Zach George, and I was like, you know what?

He is really good looking. So... So next week, I will be bringing you my conversation with the hot dog trainer and super nice dog trainer, Zach George. I just really liked talking to him. He's good people, I think, as is his wife, Bree, who has been a big part of this effort to inform people about Dog Daddy.

Before I share this conversation with you, I just wanted to mention a few things. One is that I am going to start doing a giveaway on the podcast each month. To kick it off, I would like to give away a mug that I just put in our online shop, storeforthedogs.com. In honor of Zach George, we have a new product. It is a mug that says Hot Dog Trainer on it.

If you would like to enter to win one of these mugs, visit schoolforthedogs.com slash pod. And I will announce the winner the first episode of next week. I also wanted to mention that through the end of this month, we are accepting applications to the School For The Dogs professional course. If you are interested in applying, there are only six spots. It starts in January.

You can learn more and apply at schoolforthedogs.com slash pro. I have had some students on the podcast before recent graduates. So if you scroll back, you can find those. And the other thing is I just wanted to give a shout out to my friend Shaina Feinberg, who just published a lovely book called How We Got By, 111 People Share Stories of Survival, Resilience, and Hope Through Hardship. And she actually interviewed me.

It's like a book of as told twos. With some really excellent, some really moving stories in it, much more excellent and moving than mine, I was flattered to be included, and it even includes a lovely painting of me by the illustrator Julia Rothman. And I just thought I would read this if you're new here and you don't know who I am. This is kind of like a kind of nice little intro to me and to School For The Dogs. It's not really a story of hardship.

When she asked to talk to me for the book, Shaina didn't say, tell me a story of hardship. She just said, tell me a little bit about that thing that your dad used to tell you that I've heard you talk about. Anyway, I hope it can be kind of a palate cleanser after all of that dog daddy stuff. Anyway, this is from page 66 of How We Got By. My dad was a super prolific artist, and he adhered to the idea of do, do, do, and eventually something's going to work.

He was not afraid to just try things, and in the 1970s he came up with this piece of advice, dare to be lousy. At the time, there was this catchphrase, something like, dare do be great, and he came up with the opposite of it. For a long time, I had it written on a post-it note by my desk to remind myself that sometimes you just need to try and do and dare in order to succeed. So, I was a journalist for 10 years. Or so, and then around 2008, I realized I needed to do something else with my life.

I didn't think I could pivot within journalism in a way that would be fulfilling for me. I'd always loved dogs, and I spent a lot of time at the dog park with my dog. I thought, well, I'm not going to be able to do anything work-wise unless I'm really excited about it. So I would go to the dog park, and I would make lists of things I liked, and then would think about how I could possibly make money doing those things. And at some point, I was like, you know what I really like doing?

Sitting at the dog park and writing in a notebook and talking to people and watching dogs and hanging out with my dog and learning about dogs. This is actually the thing I like doing. Someone at the dog park said that his father had just retired and become a dog trainer after going to this six-month vocational school. So... I applied to the school he went to and got in.

I put it all on my credit card. I thought, I'll figure it out. The program introduced me not only to how to train dogs, but also to the field of behavioral science, which is something that made so much sense to me. It seems crazy to me now, but I hadn't even known that behavior was a legitimate area of scientific study. Its applications for training dogs made so much sense to me, it became clear to me that That this is what I want to be doing with my life.

What wasn't clear to me when I got out of this program was how I would make a living at this. There was no one locally who I could apprentice with. There was nobody doing things the way I thought I would want to do them. I lucked into meeting this woman who was in a similar moment in her life. She was leaving one career to try to become a dog trainer and we had complementary skills.

So I said, I think we should do this together. At some point, it dawned on me that we needed to have a space. Most dog trainers in New York City don't have a space. They work out of a dog daycare or people's homes. I thought, if we had our own space, I think I could figure out how to make a living at this.

So, we ended up turning my living room into a dog training school. It was this very cute Montessori school type feeling, like a one-room classroom. And it worked. We were able to create this environment that people wanted to be in. We had a unique approach by focusing on creating a space that people wanted to be in.

Today, we're located in a two-story storefront in the East Village. We have a dozen employees and have helped literally thousands of dogs and their owners. I think my impulse was to use my dad's dare to be lousy and just go for it. What's the worst that's going to happen? Something doesn't work?

At least you gave it a shot. I think most people in the world don't give things a shot because they're worried it's going to be lousy, but failure is just something to learn from. The only way to get better at something is to keep doing the thing. If you're too timid to dare to do something that might be lousy, I think it's hard to ever do anything great.

Thanks so much for listening. You can support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes, subscribing, or shopping in the School For The Dogs shop, storeforthedogs.com. If you're in New York City, come visit us. We're at 92 East 7th Street. Be back next week with special guest, Zach George.