Lianne Shinton (00:01)

Hey everybody and welcome. So I'm Lianne Shinden from Automation Dogs. Welcome to my podcast. And today I have the pleasure of interviewing Lauren Bennett. Welcome Lauren, how are you? I'm so excited. You've joined me before. You're such a wealth of knowledge and Lauren's business is called Walking with Walter. And what area of Colorado are you in?

Lawren Bennett (00:10)

Good, thanks for having me.

We're in Littleton, so we're just a little south of Denver, but we cover all Denver Metro.

Lianne Shinton (00:26)

Okay, nice, you're getting some good weather over there right now.

Lawren Bennett (00:28)

Yeah, it's unreal. Yeah, it's really nice to be outside training dogs.

Lianne Shinton (00:31)

Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, there's going to be a lot of people who are going to be needing dog training because we've kind of been cooped up and it's been cold and icy and the dogs feet are lifting. And now that it's like, everybody's going outside. Like I went to the park yesterday and I probably saw 15 dogs and flirty was like almost gunned down by half of them and people are going to need training.

Lawren Bennett (00:54)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna start up what I'm calling spring training here pretty soon for some small group classes at the park that's close to the house. So it'll be a perfect time to launch some new behaviors from families and their dogs.

Lianne Shinton (01:10)

Yeah, it's really frustrating. Like I felt really bad for this fella yesterday. He had this hound dog named Daisy and he just Daisy, Daisy, Daisy. And he had this little perfect little black little poodle and he had his kid in the stroll. It was so much. And I got a Belgian Malinois walking by. He's probably worried. Is this going to eat my baby? Is it going to eat my dogs like Daisy? And you know, just too much. So having Daisy like not be

Lawren Bennett (01:25)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (01:38)

so vocal and scary. I was kind of like, should I move away? Like, is she going to get away? She was a hound dog. Is she going to run off? Because they're typically like runners. So this could have snowballed into something really bad.

Lawren Bennett (01:50)

Yeah. Yeah. And it, you know, that's the thing that's interesting too, is that it's, hard as trainers to not want to offer help or assistance, but, uh, it's, challenging because we know most of the time, obviously, you know, a lot of people take it personal or they're embarrassed. And so, you know, it's very like once a year, I'll try and offer, offer unsolicited help. And, and, you know, it's 50 50, sometimes folks are really, oh, man, really grateful and appreciative for it. Other times are folks are just like, no, that's okay. And.

It's interesting because in that case you just gave, he probably doesn't know any better. He just thinks that that's probably just how dogs are. They don't realize that they can be a different way and life can be so much better.

Lianne Shinton (02:30)

Yeah. Like my story, when I first was not a dog trainer, I had a husky and I love dogs and this husky, he just ran away a lot. And I was like, I really want to give him some exercise. So I'd let him off the leash and I'm like, he's a husky. I get that they run away. It's just the way they are. And I'm like, please don't run away. Please don't run away. And later I was just a young kid, but later I realized...

it doesn't have to be that way. And I had no idea. It was just so eye-opening that he didn't have to pull me on walks because it's a husky, right? They have to pull and then they have to run away. But I didn't realize that it didn't have to be that way.

Lawren Bennett (03:03)

Right, yeah.

Yeah, it's, uh, that's why I tell folks all the time. It doesn't have to be you. can, you can have what I have with my personal dogs. Uh, and you know, it's unfortunate that well-trained dogs are kind of abnormal in society. People don't recognize that, you know, misbehaving dogs are more common than well-behaved dogs. And so when they see a well-behaved dog, they're like, Oh my gosh, or I'm sure you've experienced it. Somebody's walking by and they're telling their dog, right? Like,

That's a good, that's a well-trained dog. That's how you should be behaving if you ever got it together, right? It happens all the time. And sometimes I go, well, if you just got to work with them a little bit and it could be that way, you could have this. But yeah, there's plenty of bad behaving dogs out there for all of us. So keeps us busy.

Lianne Shinton (03:55)

Yeah. And you just said something really powerful that I think like people that are frustrated with their dog, you just said, you know, just work with them a little bit and you could, you could have that. Yeah. You, they might not be doing backflips and prancing and stuff, but you know, Daisy at the park who was trying to like just bark at flirt, just a little bit can make such a huge difference in the shift. And there's a lot that goes into it. Maybe you

don't mind sharing, like structure, routine, like some of these things that folks can think about that it's, guess to us, it seems like just a little bit, because we get such dramatic results to get there. It seems like, you know, the juice is worth the squeeze.

Lawren Bennett (04:35)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the thing that I stress with everyone that I meet with, whether it's on the phone consult or it's in person is that the training part is really the easy part. We're getting the dog to be motivated to do something, whether it's for a food reward, whether it's for a toy. That's a fraction of the day that you're teaching a behavior or training your dog to do something. The rest of the day is really where the rubber meets the road.

And that's the management and rules and boundaries and structure. Right. My, my Corso rigs just, just turned three yesterday. And he, in just the last six months has started to earn a little more liberty and freedom around the house. And it's not, and I tell everyone this, it's not that he can't be trusted, but why risk it? Right. If I'm out working with dogs, he doesn't need to be out roaming around the house. Right. He's, he's at counter height. The last thing I want him to do is be able to just to grab something off the counter.

And now I have to work on fixing that. So I'm all about being proactive and in prevent defense all the time so that those habits don't get created and then reinforced over and over again. So when I talk to folks about training, yeah, we can teach your dog to walk on a loose leash. That's super easy. We can get your dog to go to a place caught super easy. But what you do with your dog, when you leave your training session is where it all.

matters, right? When you walk and go to get them in the car and they don't want to get in the car. Well, let's work on that. Let's get them in the car and stop team lifting your, your Husky into the car and teach them that there's a better way to do it. And it's beneficial for everybody. And so, yeah, that's, that's where I think that the big shift has been for me in the business over the last, you 15 years has been coaching owners a lot more on

not just the training components, know, clicker training, market training, all that stuff's, you know, pretty straightforward. Anybody can do it. You know, there's a, there's a handbook for it essentially, but really coaching them on being able to identify things that the dog is doing. that is causing problems. The root cause and seeing it from the dog's perspective and either why the dog is doing it, why they're not doing something. And so that, think that's something that sets me apart from a lot of trainers that are out there that, you know, sit.

shake, rollover, all those things, those are not very difficult to teach or to train. But teaching them how to understand their dog in a way that they've never learned how to understand their dog. And then finding out what motivates their dog so that they can use that to change the dog's behavior and change everything about how the dog exists with them in the home. It's huge. There's a massive opportunity there. And to your point, it's not training. doesn't take three hours of concentrated time every day. It's just throughout the day. don't

have training sessions for our children on how to live with us. We show them what to do, how to do it, and eventually they show us that they're trustworthy and capable of making good choices. And then that's when all their freedom comes in. And of course, dogs make mistakes, we make mistakes, but if we understand what's right and what's wrong, it makes life so much easier for everybody. And the dogs really respond well to structure, as you know. So if we can get folks just to turn down.

Lianne Shinton (07:24)

Right.

Lawren Bennett (07:47)

a little bit of the affection and baby talk and all of that, and turn up a little bit of structure and rules and boundaries, all the affection can come back in at some point. But when they get stuck in this mode of just babying the dog and the dog doesn't have any consequences for unwanted behavior, that's where they get stuck. And that's why oftentimes we see folks that struggle with not to get on the tangent of the positive only folks, but like they're going to hit a wall at some point, especially if it's a behavioral case. And it's only fair in my mind to

if they know that they're incorrect, if they're right or when they're

Lianne Shinton (08:20)

Yeah. And like my dog, she's very, she's retired working dog, but she's very well behaved. And so I maybe talk the crap out of her and spoiler and love her, but it's because we've gotten to where she is perfect. ⁓ and then like you said, you can add all that fun stuff back in and yeah, you're, it's not this uphill battle. You know, you said something a minute ago about getting that dog into the car. And I think sometimes.

Lawren Bennett (08:34)

Of

Lianne Shinton (08:48)

like we talked about earlier, people don't even realize that the dog is capable of this. And maybe they just think this is just the way it is. So it's really cool that you are taking just your obedience, but you're applying it in something actionable that will solve their problem and helping them identify that. And sometimes folks don't even realize, like, I put him in the backyard and he doesn't come in.

and I have to bribe them and wait and this and us as doctrines, we can fix that. So having someone like you that can actually work on the problem would be fantastic.

Lawren Bennett (09:28)

Yeah. And that's the powerful thing that I think happens and is almost transformative when folks come for their first eval, when I first meet them and their dog, I try and maybe identify one thing that I can fix almost like on the spot. And not all training is that simple, but getting in the car is a very good example. As they're leaving and I can see it in their eyes. They're like, okay, who's going to try and get them in the car? I'm like, he doesn't get in the car. said, we're going to fix that right now. I'm going to show you how we do it. And.

I mean, probably, I mean, I would say almost one out of every five clients that comes and leaves, like that's something they struggle with. And then I show them and it's over, it's done. Like, whoa. And I'm like, now you're going to do it. And they're like, holy cow, we've been picking this dog up for three years and he could have jumped in here the whole time. I'm like, yeah, they are, they are master manipulators. They will find a way to get out of anything. And they've shown to you and tricked you into thinking that they can't get in the car and tricked you into thinking that they don't know how to sit.

and stay for more than 15 seconds. And so kind of back to the training versus management versus coaching stuff, there's so many things that can be changed very quickly. And so when folks see that, eyes light up and they go, holy cow, if you can get them to sit or jump in the car, imagine what we could do with an hour session and coaching and whatever else we end up doing. it's...

It's a matter of showing them what can be done and then allowing, and then empowering the owners to do it themselves. Right. Me taking the leash is never going to fix the dog. Right. It's the owners that have to learn how to do those things. So that's, that's another, you know, phase of training, right. Is being a good coach for the owners and letting them take, take the wheel and then showing them what to do and how to do it as well. Just like we would with a, with a, an inboard with a dog, right. I have to show them what to do, how to do it, show them that there's some value in doing it. And then they become eager to do it again.

And it becomes exciting and then we get to enjoy our dogs and enjoy our time with our dogs.

Lianne Shinton (11:20)

Yeah, and that's why I wanted to interview you again. You've been on my podcast before and it's the way you explain things to people. I know you're an amazing dog trainer, but I think tapping into today, some of the things that you say to help the people end of the leash, because that's such a huge component and a lot of folks, you know, they like that board and train model.

Maybe you can explain what a board and train is for folks that don't know and how you train the people as part of that. Because I think a lot of people are like, board and train, that sounds cool. Take my dog and fix this. And there's more to it.

Lawren Bennett (11:55)

Yeah. Yeah.

There's so much more to it. So with our programs, again, I always start with an evaluation. So I get to know the owners, get to know what their lifestyle, their wants, their needs with their dog, what their goals are. And, board and trains can be great for a variety of things, but there's typically two things that happen. One is either the owners are just so busy. don't, they can't commit the time necessary to get the dog to a certain level.

And for me, a certain level is just basic obedience. Sit, stay, down, stay, recall, go to place, maybe a little bit of healing work, and loose leash walking. Loose leash walking is big. The other side of that is a behavior mod case, where we've got a dog that's got some serious behavioral issues that needs to come in, get a total reset, learn to operate in the world in a completely different way.

But regardless of whatever the situation is, I tell the owners before we ever allow them to even sign up is the training starts the day that you come to pick your dog up and we do our first lesson then. We call it our go home session. We, we give the owner enough information to be dangerous as it relates to what needs to happen. And then we have our followup sessions the very next week in home with the owners and then another followup session. So I tell them that the training starts the day you pick your dog.

It's like sending, you it's like you could hire me as an IT guy to come and show you how to put new programs in your computer and sit down with you and show you how to use it once a week. Or you can send the computer to me, I rebuild the computer and then I show you how to access all the programs and life is really easy at that point. It still takes maintenance because even if you delete all the programs, they're still there and if you continually access them, then they are going to...

get stronger and you're going to start using them more and all that information that we just put in the computer is going to wither away. And so I tell folks, I'm getting your dog to a level that then you can take over and manage, but dogs always require some sort of maintenance and some sort of training. The commitment has to be there to train your dog for five minutes at breakfast and five minutes at dinner. It's not this huge, overwhelming thing that I think a lot of folks think of when they go, well, my dog is just a nightmare.

Lianne Shinton (13:42)

Mm.

Lawren Bennett (14:04)

and it's going to take so much work. It doesn't take work to maintain it. And we have folks too that come through our program where they, we do our five kind of five pack, five one hour sessions over the course of five or six weeks. And we get the dog to a certain level and they're really excited about it. And then they say, you know what? I want this dog to be able to have some off leash freedom, but I don't want to understand all the soups and soup and nuts that goes into an E-caller program.

So they send the dog to me, we get them dialed in on the e-caller and then we start training the owners on how to use the e-caller. So there's a variety of reasons why folks would do board and trains. But again, I can't stress enough and I stress to them over and over again, the value of the follow-ups. If you're not going to follow up with us and you're not going to maintain the training, then you're going to end up right back where you were in 30, 45 days, somewhere in there, right? 60 days. And so, you know,

We're all creatures of habits, so it's a matter of them also changing the way that they operate too with the dog and changing their habits. Because I've changed the dog habits when they're with me, but they're going to resort right back to them if they go home and there's nothing changing at home.

Lianne Shinton (15:02)

Hmm.

I like the analogy that you used and it spoke to me because I'm a computer person. I provide software for dog trainers and that's what's really unique about you as a coach for people is that you really explain things in a way that your, you know, person you're coaching can really hear you and understand and, and, diving into the management a little bit more. I

wanted to throw this word at you where people do want a quick fix and they're like, can you just rehab him? Can you just rehabilitate him? And you kind of mentioned some management there. And I know that you've used the word fix, but I'm sure there's lots of dogs that have maybe had a lot of negative repetitions. And yeah, that's where the owner plays a big role in, I assume, maintaining the level of training.

Lawren Bennett (15:44)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And also being, being realistic and honest and fair with, with someone. If, someone's got a dog that has horrible reactivity and has a, even a bite history, you know, the reality is that those things aren't going to be quote unquote fixed. There's too much reinforcement history there. But what we can do back to the computer analogy is we can teach the dog new behaviors and things that they can then access instead of the nonsense, if you will.

Lianne Shinton (16:03)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (16:26)

But if they're allowed to go back to the nonsense, then you just kind of undid a lot of work. And that's a hard thing for folks to understand is, and I try and avoid, unless they're very interested, know, getting into all of the quadrants and all of the nonsense, kind of sometimes are, you know, just gloss over, which is fine. But I got to speak to my audience. And so I do use a lot of analogies in training because I think they resonate with folks, right? They go, that makes more sense, right? Rather than me just trying to say, well, don't let your dog do that.

Lianne Shinton (16:45)

Hmm.

Lawren Bennett (16:53)

and let them and make them do this instead. But to your point is you can't always fix them. We can make it better and we can make it manageable when we're talking a lot about behavior cases. And again, I want to be very honest and upfront with folks about that too, because the word fix gets thrown around a lot. And I can't even think of the last time I told somebody, we'll fix this. If it's loosely swallowing sure that, you know, that's a realistic thing that we can fix and change.

but it doesn't mean that the dog isn't going to continue to try and push buttons and get away with the old habits, right? So I think that in today's day and age with all of the social media and all the stuff that we see out there, people go online and they see these dogs doing a lot of great things and doing fancy stuff. And they don't realize, right, in a 15 second clip that that's six months, eight months, a year in the making. ⁓ And they go, I want my dog to be able to just do that. I'm like, okay, well.

Lianne Shinton (17:38)

Mmm... yeah.

Lawren Bennett (17:45)

We got to change the way that you operate and the way that the dog thinks about you and change that relationship. And then we can, we can make those changes because folks will have a checklist of things that they want to work on. I'm like, that's great. Those are great goals. That's a great target, but your dog doesn't even care that you're standing here talking to me. And if we can't build on that relationship and build that engagement first, nothing else is going to matter. And so I, I, I stress that, you know, day one lesson one with everybody is like,

Lianne Shinton (17:52)

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (18:13)

We got to get your dog finding you more interesting and more valuable.

Lianne Shinton (18:17)

you're making me think about I'm watching the Olympics right now. Are you watching the Olympics? Yeah, so, you know, it's like I watch it and I'm like, I could do that, but probably no. So yeah, like I was just thinking about someone watches my doc do a Mondial ring routine and you know, they on a 15 second clip, it's just like maybe watching these.

Lawren Bennett (18:20)

Yeah, we just tuned in a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (18:42)

figure skaters and downhill skiers and all these amazing athletes and how much time and effort they put in just to get that one shot.

Lawren Bennett (18:50)

Yeah,

yeah. There's a lot of intricacy involved, right? And there's a lot of things that go on. You know, part of the reason I named my business Walking with Walter was that the origin story was Walter was my English bulldog that I got, and he was a total knucklehead. And I've always been good with dogs ever since I was young, fascinated by him, but never really did much with it other than with my personal dogs, but never really learned to really, you know, quote unquote, train. But he was an absolute nightmare. He was just a, he was a bulldog, just

Lianne Shinton (18:53)

Mm-hmm.

Lawren Bennett (19:17)

like a bowl in a china shop. And so with him, I realized, okay, we got to get you walking on a loose leash first. I can't let you drag me all over the place. And I was in Phoenix at the time. So he's huffing and puffing, you know, it's hot. and so I focused on that and got that better. And then I realized that there was so much more going on in the relationship as it relates to just being able to walk your dog. Right. So when I, when I thought about naming the business, it was, you know, walking with Walter, there's so much that happens when you're walking your dog.

Are they engaged with you? Are they not engaged with you? Are they sniffing? Are they pulling? Are they grabbing? Are they lunging? Whatever. And if you can master a loose leash walk, that tells you a lot, right? It tells you your dog's engaged with you. It tells you that they value you. It tells you that you're important to them. And it's not a one-way relationship where you're just constantly dropping treats, hoping that they don't bail out and take off and that they don't react to a dog. And so...

Lianne Shinton (20:09)

Hmm.

Lawren Bennett (20:11)

We spend a fair amount of time talking about that and then show them clients how to do that. Cause that's obviously one of the big things. And I hate to see it. As you mentioned earlier, right? You go to the park and you see people just getting dragged all over the place. It's like, it doesn't have to be that way. And it, and it's not a massive investment in time or energy to fix it, but you got to show them a new way doing it. So that's a little bit why I named the business though, walk in with Walter. So I get called Walter all the time, which is understandable, but I've also been called worse. So that's okay.

Lianne Shinton (20:35)

I

love those stinky male bulldogs. They are like a bull in a china shop. Is Walter still with us?

Lawren Bennett (20:44)

No, he's been gone for about five, six years now.

Lianne Shinton (20:48)

And do you have a new superstar?

Lawren Bennett (20:52)

so Riggs, Riggs, ⁓ our Kani Corso is, he's pretty special. He's a great looking dog and obviously turns heads everywhere we go. So, and we have Doug, who's our golden doodle. He's just turned seven. So he was kind of the demo dog for a while, but now he's retired and Riggs does a lot of stuff and goes everywhere with us and obviously draws a lot of attention. So he's a nice, he's a nice showpiece and a great advertising piece for me too.

Lianne Shinton (20:53)

Rigs. Okay.

Lawren Bennett (21:18)

his people. I was just at at a, at an event this last weekend and walking around with him and off leash and, know, everybody was fascinated by him. And then somebody was trying to walk past us with two giant, look like American Bulldogs on prom collars harnesses. They're growling and barking and pulling at us. And he's just, just sitting there, just letting them go by. and of course, you know, classic owner was like, guys, just ignore that dog. He's so well-behaved. You don't, he doesn't want to have anything to do with you, you know, talking to him and they're just going nuts.

Lianne Shinton (21:19)

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (21:48)

And the guy that was talking to me, I just finished telling him about I was a trainer and kind of tell him about the business. And he's like, well, you should go give him a card. I'm like, Nope, it's just, it's not going to work. No sense. said, if you want to go give him a card, you're more than welcome to, you can give him one of my cards, but he's not, he's not interested. And, you know, taking dogs like that out, huge, powerful dogs like that out in public. And they're just menaces. And I just, it's unbelievable to me that.

Lianne Shinton (21:59)

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (22:14)

You wouldn't spend a little time trying to figure out why they're doing that and fix it, but he must have stronger shoulders than me.

Lianne Shinton (22:18)

Yeah,

yeah, it's stress. It's a liability. Yeah, the the name Doug. I love that. I love when people name a human name like Walter and Doug, like Rick's didn't didn't get a human name like a Steve or something.

Lawren Bennett (22:23)

Yeah.

Yeah. So,

so Walter, named Walter got it from the big Lebowski, the movie, the big Lebowski, huge Lebowski fan. So John Goodman, was Walter and Riggs got Riggs from lethal weapon. So Riggs and Murtaugh. ⁓ and then Doug, don't know how we landed on Doug, but we landed on Doug and it's a perfect name for him. I have a beware of Doug sign on my, on the, yeah, you've seen that picture on the training area, but, yeah. So yeah, the human names are always fun.

Lianne Shinton (22:41)

Love that movie.

⁓ yeah, okay.

Just funny.

I saw that. It's fantastic.

Yeah. And so tell me a little bit about how you got into dog training. mentioned that you were in, was it Phoenix? And now you're in Colorado.

Lawren Bennett (23:11)

Yeah. So it's an interesting story. So I, as I mentioned earlier, I've always been great with dogs, always helping friends, always helping neighbors. And, when my daughter was born, so I was in sales most of my life. And so when my daughter was born, my job was essentially paying for her childcare. And so my wife and I sat down and she said, Hey, why don't you stay home with her for the, for the next year? You stay home, dad.

And we'll revisit what we do after that. And obviously great, had a great experience with her staying home with her was, it was amazing. Not many people get that opportunity. So very fortunate to be able to do that. but when it was time for her to start preschool, I was just not interested in going back to the corporate world. And my wife, much to her credit said, well, why don't you just start a dog training business? You've been helping people and not getting paid. So why don't you just start doing that? And I was like,

Lianne Shinton (23:44)

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (24:03)

You can do that. You can start it. The good and bad of the dog world, right? There's not a lot of regulation around who can train and who can't. But I said, okay, great. And so I think that really the only advertising I ever did was right at the beginning on the Nextdoor app. And I got a few leads off of that and the rest of it was word of mouth. And that's going on nine years ago. And what I learned at the very beginning was how much I really didn't know.

And there's, it's very easy to impress a non-dog person, in my opinion, with just a couple of subtle things, right? A loose leash walk or, you know, sit, stay, down, stay, threshold manners, all those kinds of basic things. And you can, you can, you can make a good living just doing those things. But as you go on, you start to get more complicated cases and you start to go, well, maybe my methods, whatever they may be, don't really apply to this dog.

Lianne Shinton (24:29)

Hmm.

Lawren Bennett (24:57)

And so what I started to do is then seek, you know, seek out, even at this time, right? Eight, nine years ago, there wasn't a whole lot of stuff online. Like for me, it was Learburg. I'm going to Learburg and watching Michael Ellis and, anybody that they had on there. And, then I started to realize, I don't really understand the why behind the Y with, with, the dogs. And so I started to take a deep dive into that and started taking on more complicated cases and realized, okay.

I'm doing pretty well here, but there's still more to it. And like a lot of trainers, I started getting more interested in the dog sport world, right? You start to realize dogs can do a lot of cool things and that's like, well, maybe I should do that. And so really got more into dog sport stuff with PSA and NADF and then trying to find, you know, clubs and folks to do that stuff with. And I wasn't ever considering really competing, although I will this next year with, with rigs again, but, it's, it's just a different.

different way of looking at the dogs. And I think there's value on both sides. And so you can take a lot from the sport world and apply it to pet dogs and vice versa. And I think starting the pet world gives you so much more information. And it's so much more challenging, quite frankly, because we're trying to motivate dogs in the sport world. It's like they're motivated. That's the easy part. you know, turning, turning the volume down on the sport dogs is probably the thing you have to do more than, than on, on pet dogs. Right. So.

Lianne Shinton (26:11)

Mm-hmm.

Lawren Bennett (26:20)

so, so the business just kind of grew, it just kind of blew up. I started finding, that a lot of referrals for folks and again, lot, mostly pet dog stuff, right. but in the last year I've started doing some more sport dog stuff and, you know, some personal protection dog work for some folks and some clients that are, you know, return clients that are like, Hey, we know you do this and it's not official, but could you help us with this and doing some of those things? But the business at its core is, for.

your average family pet dog. I we spend a lot of time and energy helping families and, and you know, it's a lot of doodles here, a lot of Burmese mountain dogs. and, and the joy that I get out of it is, is seeing the transformation at home. I, and I, I try not to sound too like sappy about it, but it is life changing for some families. mean, you've got husbands and wives arguing about whose dog it is because they don't want to walk it or

Lianne Shinton (27:02)

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (27:08)

The dog just nipped the neighbor kid and now nobody wants to take responsibility because it's the mom's fault, the dad's fault, and they don't know what to do. And kind of bringing all that chaos and slowing it down and saying, Hey, this is something that can be fixed and can be addressed and providing the steps on how to do it. And then providing that guidance. And, know, what I always tell folks as it relates to any dog for that matter is that if you can get in the habit of telling your dog what to do rather than what not to do a lot of people's dogs.

think their name is no or knock it off or shut up. And if you can redirect that focus onto showing them what to do and how to doing it through training, then their lives get so much easier. And so my pitch oftentimes is there's management, which we talked about earlier, there's management and then there's training. Management is what we can do today to make life easier and better. Don't give dogs access to things that we don't want them to have access to.

In the meantime, we're teaching them the alternative behaviors. We're showing them, Hey, places, the new thing to do when the doorbell rings. And through that, it's a very clear, concise message, not only to the owners, but to the dog. go, so you mean to tell me when they ask me, what do my dogs do when the doorbell rings? Well, they run to their beds and they stay there. And that's not a hard thing to do, but you have to start with the fundamentals.

Lianne Shinton (28:19)

Mm-hmm.

Lawren Bennett (28:24)

And even just that little story telling them that any dog can really do that. And they go, holy cow, we never thought of that. Our dog goes ballistic at the door. Well, let me show you how we start that process. And then, you know, it is, it's life-changing. It's just no stress. It's right. The last thing I want to do is be stressed out about a dog barking their head off every time an Amazon package arrives. And I mean, that rings true for a lot of folks. And then, you we go from there.

Lianne Shinton (28:42)

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, you mentioned one of the most rewarding parts is just helping a family out of that chaos. Would you be able to share a transformation story that comes to mind of a situation where they were in chaos, they had maybe a difficult dog and you were able to help them?

Lawren Bennett (29:04)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, that dog is here with me right now just for boarding the family's out of town. But the story with this dog was, it was a rescue. The dog came to them at I think two, maybe two and a half and serious reactivity and resource guarding issues. And so they're in a part of town where all sorts of criteria around like rebuilding your house and they, you know, was a historical house. I only mentioned that because they had tons of people coming and going in and out of the house.

as they're trying to get some work done. And they were pulling their hair out. They'd sent the dog to two other trainers with no, no success, tried online courses, no success. And the dog came for a board and train. And this dog has, and again, I don't want to sell this, the dogs will never have any reactivity, but this dog has shown zero reactivity since then has not had any aggression in the home has had zero issues with food or.

Lianne Shinton (29:54)

Nice.

Lawren Bennett (29:58)

toys or anything in the home. have small children in the house. And it was very transformative, not only for them in that moment, but moving forward, right? They know that they can have a dog sitter come over if they need to, or they know that it's not going to be stressful for me to try and retrain the dog when it comes for boarding. And so that to me is a case of it's so transformative for the owners.

And it just changed the way, like when you walk into their house, it just like, they can relax. And one of their neighbors, when I was doing an in-home with them, would come over and was terrified of the dog, like would not come, even come onto the porch. And so I was standing there on our first go at home session. was like, it'll be fine. said, I know you have a history with this dog. And so me just telling you it's fine. Isn't going to fix your fear of this dog, but here's what I want you to do. I'm going to stand here. I've got the leash.

I can ensure you that the dog's not gonna come towards you, but I want you to just walk in and go sit down. She walked in, went and sat down. They got her a cup of coffee. She sat down and relaxed. She had not been able to do that in two years, just to walk into a neighbor's house with their friends with, and just sit down and relax without the dog going nuts or being in the kennel going nuts or them just saying, hey, we gotta put you outside and put the dog outside. so I, you know, obviously I stay in touch with them. We still keep tabs on them. The dog comes for boarding, but...

Lianne Shinton (30:58)

Wow.

Lawren Bennett (31:13)

To me, that was one of the first big transformations where this dog was a real problem and we were able to make the change that we needed to for the dog, not only to continue to live in the home, but live successfully and be a part of the family and still go do things.

Lianne Shinton (31:27)

Wow, yeah, that sounds like a dog that went from like zero to 60, just an amazing transformation. And yeah, I bet that was a lot of stress for everybody. It's a big liability too, yeah.

Lawren Bennett (31:40)

Yeah. And

the thing I don't want to forget to mention is that the commitment of the owners is what made it happen. Right. I can, I can make those changes, but to make them long lasting, the owners have to be committed. And this was a family that was committed to making those changes and, following my direction and following my lead. and, that's, that's the big piece of it.

Lianne Shinton (31:45)

Hmm.

And

yeah, and you being the coach that you are. I know speaking of the Olympics, I had a client just to train his German Shepherd and he was an Olympian. And he said to me something that I was like, wow, he said, know, lot of the things you say, it's like my coach, my Olympic level coach, I'm ooh, cool. But it sounds like that is.

Lawren Bennett (32:21)

Yeah, yeah.

Lianne Shinton (32:24)

something that you bring to the table as well for people because if I sign up for a trainer at the gym to try and get in shape and get fit but they don't motivate me and coach me right it's not going to work. That's such an important piece.

Lawren Bennett (32:36)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you'll see limited,

limited success. they, yeah, to exactly to your point, I'm invested in their success. I tell them this all the time. Your success is my success. I don't advertise. don't, I don't, I'm very fortunate not to have to do that, but it's because we have, the proof is in the pudding, right? We see that and they go and tell everybody about

Lianne Shinton (32:48)

Mm.

Lawren Bennett (33:01)

Or they, the other, other people see it in the change in the dog. they're like, well, what happened here? we worked with Lauren. I just got two calls this morning from folks like that, that here are neighbors, our neighbors, our parents of a client of yours. And they said, we should call you. So let's talk. Great. Awesome. Like those are the best. And I'm all, I'm so grateful for that. And it's, it's, it's a matter of, as you said, I have to be a good coach for them, but also.

Lianne Shinton (33:19)

Nice.

Lawren Bennett (33:28)

they've got to put the work in, right? Back to the, you know, I use, I use that personal trainer example all the time. Right? If I want to lose weight and get in shape and I hire a personal trainer, they're going to show me what to do and how to do it. If I don't execute on that, there's going to be no changes. And so, I am back to like, I'm pretty direct about those things. It's like, because I want you to be successful. It has nothing to do with me being, egotistical and like, well, if you have a dog that doesn't do well, then I look bad.

Lianne Shinton (33:34)

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (33:53)

No, it's more about the owner, but I want you to be successful. You hired me for a reason. And so every week when we get back together, when we're doing our private sessions, where are we at? Right. And just like a check-in with a coach or a business coach, it's like, Hey, where are we at? Did you have time last week? Most of the time, like, well, we didn't get to do as much as we could. All right, great. Well, we'll pick up where we left off. Let's see where you're at and then we'll move forward, but we won't, I won't skip steps. I'm very adamant about.

Lianne Shinton (34:05)

Hmm.

Lawren Bennett (34:20)

We're not going to skip the skip step five because you haven't mastered step one. We just can't do it because you're going to fail and the dog's going to fail and everybody's going to get frustrated. And so we want to make sure that everybody's successful when they come through.

Lianne Shinton (34:32)

Now, when you were speaking about this dog, about the dramatic transformation, you'd mentioned that they tried training. And I know personally from personal experience, I was young, I had my husky and I'm like, I got my new husky I rescued. I'm going to sign up for training. And I signed up for local classes and it got me nowhere. And I literally believed that this was amazing. This was the best there was. I had no idea.

I could stop the dog from pulling. I could have the dog off leash and be amazing. I just didn't even know. And I'm so glad that the family that you helped, that they persevered and didn't fall into that belief of like, I guess this is it. And this is what I have to accept. ⁓

Lawren Bennett (35:12)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, that's a very good point. Yeah. And in back to like part of my process and why I do those evaluations with folks is it's an interview process, right? I'm not, I'm not, you know, not pulling the curtains back on anything, but they have to think that I'm a good fit for them. I have to think that they're a good fit for me. And then we got to go, okay, where are we at from here? And how, do we move forward in, a way that that's beneficial to everybody.

I had an eval and it was actually referral. had an eval a couple of weeks ago where it just wasn't a good fit. They were determined to just fix one thing. And I couldn't get through to them about X, Y, and Z have to happen in order for this to stop. You can't just ignore all of these other things. And at the end of the session, I said, hopefully you've learned some stuff today. And they're like, no, we've learned a lot. We really appreciate it. I said,

I just don't think that I'm going to be the best fit for you. And I'm happy to send you a, refer you to some other folks that might have a different approach that might be better for you. But what I can tell you is you have to have the foundational pieces in place. And I got an email from them two weeks later and said, Hey, we had time to think about what you said. And we are interested in training, but totally understand if, if you're not the right person for us, if you could refer us to somebody else, we'd greatly appreciate it. Great. No problem. I sent them off to somebody else.

but you have to be willing to do that too, right? I can't, I don't want to bring somebody in and say, yeah, we can fix that problem, but your dog's gonna be a nightmare in all these other areas. It's just, I don't want to be like this acute thing that we're just going to fix this. So I provide, it's, a holistic approach. If we can, we can get foundational pieces, then you can teach your dog anything you want. And I, and that's one thing I say in all my evals, like you don't have to teach your dog how to do a nice proper focused heel, but you're to have the tools available to you if you want to teach it.

Lianne Shinton (36:43)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (37:09)

You can teach it and you don't need me to teach it. I'm going to show you all those steps if you're interested. And I think a lot of folks appreciate that too, because then they can take the information that I've given them and apply it not only to their dog, but to friends dogs and to their next dog. And I know that there I'm to be their next call or next referral because I'm not trying to hold anything back. I'm not saying, Hey, sign up first, right? Or come to this group class and then we'll, we'll kind of fix things. No, it's like, let me show you what I'm capable of doing.

Lianne Shinton (37:32)

Mm.

Lawren Bennett (37:39)

And I think that goes a long way. And to your point about group classes and those things, I could go on a whole tangent about that. But if you don't know what you don't know, you get referred to somebody or you see something online and there's all these reviews and, this is a great class, it may be a great class. It might just not be a great class for you and what you need. And that's the important thing. And that's why I think I've been successful is that I'm small enough where

I can make those adjustments. everything is just cookie cutter and putting a square peg in a round hole. It's like, let's figure out what we can do for you to make your life easier and make your dog better for you. And then we put that plan together.

Lianne Shinton (38:17)

What really stood out to me with everything you just touched on was, and you've mentioned this earlier, was the eval. You mentioned phone consultation, you've mentioned eval. And I feel like if someone's just like, I think this is the best I'm gonna get out of my dog. The eval is probably a great place to start to open their eyes. Tell us a little bit more about the phone consultation versus the in-person eval, all those options and what those look like.

Lawren Bennett (38:36)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, so what we do with our phone consultation is it's a really just get to know you call, right? It's like, what's, what's happening. Fill me in on a little bit of the basics, you know, what type of dog is it, where you live in, what's the dog's lifestyle? Like what's your lifestyle? Like what, why do you call on me? Right. And, you know, if I were to take it, take an average of all the calls, right. It's going to be reactivity. Eight out of 10 dogs we deal with have some form of reactivity, right. And so I explained a little bit about.

Why dogs get reactive, how we problem solve that with their dog in particular. And then the next step is always going to be booking an in-person evaluation. So we offer two choices. offer one where we come to your home. So we're spending an hour in home where it's an eval and a bit of a training session, or we offer at my, at my place, we offer a 30 minute eval where they come. But what, no matter what choice you pick, I send a.

intake form. And this is a, it's a pretty extensive intake form, but it really paints a picture for me of all that's going on with the dog behaviorally, how the dog is living with them, not just what they tell me on the phone, because there's going to be a lot of times where they're going to tell me something and then they forget something, or they just don't realize maybe free feeding the dog is important or not important. Right. And so this checklist, they go through that, that's submitted. So when they come to me, I've got a really nice little outline of exactly what's, what's happening with that dog.

And then during the evaluation, we kind of talked through that. And on that form also was like, Hey, what are the top three things that you love about your dog? And what are the three things that you would like to fix? And then we talk about how do we address those things that we need to fix? And again, a lot of times it's foundational pieces. It's very fundamental things. And then I show them, Hey, how we address one or two of those things. So if it's reactivity, okay, well, the first thing we have to do is manage it. We can't allow the dog to blow up. Right. And so.

We, we start working through some of those things. And then at the end of the evaluation, it's, it's a simple, Hey, you know, if you can retain 20 % of the information that I just dumped on you here today, you're going to be in good shape. Moving forward. The next step is, okay, what do we want to do? Like, what is it back to like, what is, what is your lifestyle? Like, do you have time to, to, to commit to doing training sessions with us here or at your home? If not, then we may need to consider a board and train.

And if we do the board and train again, I'm going to remind you the training starts when you pick the dog up. So you're to have to commit some time to training the dog, whether we do inboard with the dog or we're coming to you or you're coming to us for one hour sessions. and then from there, it's, it's a matter of just getting on the calendar, right? So they, they can go online. They book, their preferred method. If it's a board and train, we'll have one more actual conversation, either in person or on the phone before we, can commit to it.

and get it scheduled and we go from there. But realistically, the only things that you can schedule on my website are a phone call, an in-person evaluation, or an in-home evaluation. Because I don't want people just signing up for training. Because we have to qualify each other. We have to do that. Because I do not want somebody wasting their time or their money coming to me if I'm not a good fit for them.

Lianne Shinton (41:52)

And I think this is great advice because it's important for folks to identify who is a good trainer, what to look for. And some things that stood out there with you asked a ton of questions, both in conversation and also on the intake form. And if your trainer isn't asking any questions and you just sign up for those group classes, probably a red flag.

Lawren Bennett (42:17)

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that there's a, and everybody does things differently, right? I'm sure there's plenty of, you know, there's great trainers out there like, yeah, just bring me the dog. I'll deal with the dog that's in front of me, which is fine. Right. There's, there's, you know, there's, you know, seminars that do that, right. Those are more triage situations where it's like, we got to stop this behavior today. This is not, not healthy, not safe, whatever it is. but big picture.

There has to be a way to teach a dog the alternative behavior, not just stopping a behavior, right? Telling him, no, knock it off. That's fine. But then what else are they supposed to do? Where are they supposed to put that energy? And so, you know, get back to my sales background, Ask questions, to the root cause. What's going on? Why do you think this is happening? Is this something that you had with your other dog? I mean, the number of times where I've had people tell me, well, I had dogs growing up and this is just how they behaved. But my wife told me that...

that dogs don't behave this way. Yeah, you know, dogs shouldn't be barking and biting everybody. I lived on a farm growing up and that's what all the dogs did when I grew up. They protected the livestock. Right, but you're in downtown Denver with a French poodle and it's not a guard dog. So we have to change the way that the dog is behaving. And so, like you said earlier, like sometimes they don't know better. And so I also encourage folks like, hey, have you talked to other trainers? Are you calling other trainers?

Lianne Shinton (43:20)

you

Lawren Bennett (43:33)

Are you interviewing them just as much as I'm interviewing you? Because you should be. And the beauty of my business model is because I get so many referrals, a lot of that prequalification for them to me is done because they're getting it from a trusted source. They're not getting it just from a Google review or some posting that they see. They call this guy, he seems to know what he's doing or go to this group class. It's like,

Lianne Shinton (43:37)

Hmm.

Lawren Bennett (43:59)

They've seen it, right? They've seen their friend's dogs, their neighbor's dogs, whatever it is. so proof's in the pudding, right? Again, the work is there and then they get to decide, is Lauren really good fit? Do I want to work with this knucklehead or not? Yes or no. That's great. Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (44:11)

Excellent. Well, that's some great advice. Is there anything else that you'd like to share on the dog training aspect to help local folks?

Lawren Bennett (44:19)

You know, I think, I think that we've touched on it, but it's, worth driving home is that they have more control than they think that they do. They have the ability to change the way that the dog behaves with the most powerful tool in the business. And it's called a leash. You know, the number of calls we get with folks about dogs jumping, we'll put a leash on them. Don't let them jump. Stop the behavior first. so

You know, I think this next class that we're going to do, we're going to cover a lot of just foundational pieces and basic problems. I've, and the thing about my intake form is I can go back and look at the history of like all of the, like in, in summarize the most common issues, right? Reactivity, leash pulling. but, but when folks are, trying to decide on a trainer, I mean, we just touched on it, but it's, it's find somebody that that you like, you're going to be spending time with that person. Find somebody that has, some skills that they can demonstrate in front of you.

and not just show you their demo dog and be like, my dog's pretty cool. No, you got to be able to do those things. Like show, show your work. And, and if you can't show your work, then I would say, say, move on, right? Your dog doesn't have to be flashy, but if a dog trainer has a dog, they should be able to take that dog and walk it through a farmer's market or walk it down the park without that dog flipping out, getting excited about people, jumping on people. Like that's just a ground, ground level thing for me, right. With, the dog and

There's a lot of young trainers out there that are coming up that understand social media and can make things look a lot cooler than I ever can and can put time and energy into that. With their dog, it doesn't mean they know how to transform someone else's dog and coach them on how to transform that dog. And for some people, and again, defining what transform means, right? Somebody again, could just be, I just need a loose leash walk and my dog to walk next to me. For them, that's a huge transformation. For other people, it's a behavior mod where the dog is biting people and we got to change the whole thing.

It's not my job to decide what's right for their dog. It's my job to show them what the dog is capable of, helping them meet their goals. And that's where I come in, right? It's not my job to say, your dog should be doing all of these things. Yes, there's some fundamentals that need to happen and be in place so you can go do other things with your dog. But it's not my place to tell them your dog needs a formal heal and your dog needs to go to place and stay there for six hours. That stuff's not important, right?

I have to meet them where they're at and then help them understand how to get to their goals and help them achieve them.

Lianne Shinton (46:37)

I like that. it sounds like you're very flexible, not super strict and structured and you meet them where they need to meet you based on their dog and their life.

Lawren Bennett (46:51)

Yeah. Yeah. If we're doing, let's say somebody signs up and we're doing five, one hour sessions together, most of the time, those first two sessions are going to look very similar to everyone because they're, teaching foundational pieces. But after those pieces are in place, now we're addressing all of the issues that they've listed out for me, or we're adding new behaviors and teaching the dog new things. So I don't have, yeah, I don't have like a handout that says, Hey, this is what we're doing. And it looks the exact same for everybody.

Lianne Shinton (47:21)

Alright.

Lawren Bennett (47:21)

Outside

of those first session or two, we're doing things that are completely unique to their needs and their dog's needs more importantly. And that's what makes us a little bit different. Cause you do, you go to these group classes, no matter the size, you go to one or two of them and here's your handout. Here's what we're going to do today. And sorry if your dog's reactive, but that's not what we're working on today. We're not working on that. So we're working on sits and downs. And if that doesn't work for you, then we're going to have to ask you to sit outside the class because you're being disruptive.

Lianne Shinton (47:28)

Wow.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Lawren Bennett (47:48)

So

we don't, we don't want that, right? We want you to be able to go do things with your dog, but we have to have some foundational pieces in there so that then you can be successful. So yeah, there's nothing really cookie cutter about, about the way we operate and the way that we do our programs, whether it be board and trains or, I mean, yeah, if you were going to look at my, my whiteboard in the dog room right now, where the dogs are, each dog has their own category and all the things that we're working on that they need. at the top of that list is engagement, recall place.

for all the dogs and then everything below that is we're gonna get them to these points where they can achieve these new goals, but the goals are different for each dog.

Lianne Shinton (48:26)

That sounds amazing. Now just to shift a little bit, lightening round, I'll ask some fun questions. Favorite music, favorite genre of music?

Lawren Bennett (48:35)

We are huge Mumford and Sons fans here. So as a family Mumford and Sons for me, I'm a little more rock and roll, but I like everything coming around on country a little bit, but yeah.

Lianne Shinton (48:48)

Cool, cool, I like rock and roll in country too. Favorite food? Yeah, everybody says that. Justin Rigney says pizza, everybody says pizza. Yeah. All right. Do you have any hobbies outside of dogs?

Lawren Bennett (48:53)

Pizza, hands down.

He doesn't eat carbs. What was he talking about? He just he likes pepperoni. That's that must be it. Yeah.

So basketball is a big thing for me, although my, you know, one too many injuries, so I'm not allowed to play competitively anymore. But basketball is a big hobby or watching, we love watching basketball here. And then obviously spending time with the kids, you know, that's a fun thing to do too. Not necessarily a hobby, but you know, a lifestyle.

Lianne Shinton (49:25)

Nice.

Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned that you were involved in PSA and now Riggs might be getting into competition. Maybe share a little bit about what your vision is there for Riggs.

Lawren Bennett (49:40)

So this, and this is a, uh, uh, was very humbling for me is that at a year, just a little over a year and a half, I went to, um, to compete with him and failed miserably failed miserably because I thought we had it down. And then I realized he started rolling around in the grass at the start, at the start, but she's never done before in a year and a half, never rolled around the grass, never did any of those things. And I thought,

Lianne Shinton (50:02)

you

Lawren Bennett (50:08)

I'm in trouble. This is going to be a problem. He is not in the right state of mind. I'm now not right in the right state of mind. So I got busy. We took some time off. And so this year we're going to go, go back and compete and hopefully end up getting doing our level one. but, but for him, that's probably the extended, he just so big, right? There's, there's, you know, he's not a standard PSA dog by any means. And so when we, when we showed up, I was like, my gosh, some of the decoys are very familiar with them.

Lianne Shinton (50:10)

you

Lawren Bennett (50:33)

We're probably glad that he didn't get to the bite session. But, it is, it's a different, it's a different world. Right. So, it, again, it was very humbling because I thought we had it figured out and that's my dog and he knows how to do all this stuff. got to the trial field and Nope. And it was on me. It wasn't on him. It was totally me. And so this year or spring summer, right? You know, trial season, when that comes back around, we're gonna, we're gonna be ready to go. We've been practicing and we're ready to go.

and maybe Mondio, don't know. I like, I like the idea of Mondio, but, it's with, with all trialing, right. It's, it's a time, it's a big time commitment to, right. You're traveling a lot or they're, you know, you're setting aside a weekend. so with me running the business, sometimes it's just difficult for me to set that time aside, but, the goal will be to compete with him and at least, up to level one in PSA this next year.

Lianne Shinton (51:07)

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, I wish you luck in that. yeah, I like that you appreciate, you know, that, you know, he didn't do as amazing as you had anticipated, but sometimes that teaches us the most. And some of the best advice I've been given is, you know, sometimes it's good to get kicked in the face. You need to learn how to lose more than you need to learn how to win.

Lawren Bennett (51:40)

Yeah, adversity really does help. mean, that's the key, And it was, like said, it was humbling. Like I was so disappointed. And then I went back and I realized, you know, I didn't do enough, right? We didn't get enough reps in, we didn't practice enough. And I was just overconfident. it's something I thought about since that day, right? And I was like, okay, we'll be ready, we'll be ready. And now it's time to be ready.

We look forward to doing it.

Lianne Shinton (52:09)

Love it. What a great story. And I wish you and Riggs the best of luck, whether Mondio or PSA or whatever sport you take them to. Cool. Is there anything else you'd like to add today,

Lawren Bennett (52:17)

Yeah, thank you.

That's it. can find us, you know, find us on Instagram, go to the website, walkingwithwalter.com. We're adding, you know, new videos and new content pretty regularly. We're trying to do more YouTube stuff than short form because I just, I don't feel like I can get enough information out there on the short form stuff, to be honest. and then we're, we're, we're, continuing to grow as, as people keep finding us. So, so very, very grateful. So we say thank you to for everyone that's, that's

stuck with us and continue to refer business to us. And we're very grateful for that and look forward to another great year.

Lianne Shinton (52:52)

You know, that was a good point. You just had to that you can't get the information out that you want to get to people through the short form. And I know that this day and age were quite spoiled and we all want like right now all the video information just crammed into this one. When I press this button, I want to just learn all of that. But yeah, I think definitely people should go to your YouTube videos and check that out because it sounds like there's going to be a lot of great teachings there.

Lawren Bennett (53:18)

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And just like with everything else, there's a lot of great trainers out there on YouTube that have some great content, but maybe it's not for everybody, right? Like, obviously people come to me for a reason. And so I want people to also have access to me online so they can either do tuneups, just following my guidance online or try something new with their dog, right? So we're trying to offer a mix of videos and information for folks, not just obedient stuff, but some more fun stuff too here as we move on in the year.

Lianne Shinton (53:25)

Mm-hmm.

I like that. I like that. Because yeah, if you're not having fun, it's not going to keep you doing it.

Lawren Bennett (53:50)

Yeah, yeah, you got to have, if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. Yeah, that's what I always say.

Lianne Shinton (53:54)

Yeah.

Awesome. And walkingwithwalter.com, right? People want to reach out to book a phone consultation or an in-home or an in-facility eval. Perfect. Great. Well, thank you again, Lauren. Everybody, this is Lauren Bennett from Walking with Walter. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. It was a great conversation.

Lawren Bennett (53:59)

Correct. Yep.

Correct, yep, yep.

Yeah, thanks for having me again. was great talking to you again. Look forward to maybe another one soon.

Lianne Shinton (54:21)

Yeah, absolutely. You definitely have already helped me in my other podcast we did where it's more coaching dog trainers and helping them. But today I think we really spoke to folks that might be interested in working with you that may not even realize there's help out there for their dogs. So such a great conversation. Awesome. And again, I'm Lianne Shinton from Automation Dogs and thanks for listening to my podcast.

Lawren Bennett (54:38)

Great, thanks again.