We had the good fortune of connecting with Rain Jordan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rain, how does your business help the community?

Fear in dogs is very common and yet there are relatively few humane experts in canine fear abatement and avoidance. Canine Fear Solutions and The Fearful Dogs Project offer program development, implementation, training, and coaching to help dog caregivers help the dogs for whom they care navigate the world with as little fear as possible.

We work in most of North America and abroad to help private dog guardians, shelter staff and volunteers, rescue staff and volunteers, veterinary staff, and service providers including groomers, walkers, sitters, and professional dog trainers and behavior professionals be able to help the dogs in their care using the very best and most humane practices available.

My mission is to help people be able to understand and be able to help their dogs no matter the concern. The better I can do this, the less loss people will suffer in the form of surrender or euthansia.

In many regions there are no humane dog behavior professionals with suitable expertise in helping fearful, feral, traumatized, and anxious dogs. Unfortunately this tends to result in people feeling they must settle for whomever or whatever service is driving distance from them, and too often that results in people hiring underqualified providers, and their dogs end up worse than before. Sometimes that’s the result of shock collars and other unnecessary aversives, but sometimes it is simply the result of the person hired not having the specific, specialized expertise these cases need.

For this reason my broader goal is also to train and certify fully qualified, anti-aversives experts in canine fear abatement. Using a mentorship model with meticulous coaching and testing, I can ensure that behavior professionals with true expertise in fear abatement/avoidance will be available to more people. More people with more expertise means more dogs and their humans with happy lives.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?

I began as a rescue volunteer, then was a rescue shelter founder/director, before being eventually driven to become a dog behavior professional. It’s a history that provided me with a more wholistic approach. Attention to breadth, depth, and rigor in terms of ensuring dog wellbeing generally and in terms of doing excellent work for fearful dogs specifically are prioritized. Innovation is also important.  While I, like many behavior professionals, follow evidence-based practices, part of being evidence based includes the expertise a pro has and the pro’s innovative spirit, which allows an always-improving model of best practices.

The anti-aversives approach is foundational to my approach, and it’s always exciting to see my clients begin to improve themselves on that topic more quickly as we work together. I’m very proud of my happy clients who have found joy in their dogs’ natures and comfort in their own new knowledge and skills. It’s great to know that when they eventually complete work with me, they are prepared to handle whatever comes next — including years later, with future dogs. I love it when a client tells me what she did between our sessions that helped her dog, and it turns out to be something she figured out by applying what she’d learned with me so far to an entirely different challenge.  That is the ultimate success.

You asked whether it was easy building my practice. I would not quite say it was easy. While I learn pretty quickly, learning about helping previously abused and neglected dogs came with a lot of heartache early on since I began my journey as a result of the urgent needs of these newly rescued dogs coming to our shelter. It was and always is painful to see a dog suffering. I overcome this by, as I’ve mentioned, taking on the job of creating better lives for at-risk dogs around the world, whatever their situation.

Some lessons learned: 1: I will never be able to please everyone, but I can impart key principles that act as seeds for everyone–and I must do that because if I don’t, it will be very difficult to fulfill my life’s mission. 2: The only true lifesaving is lifelong lifesaving; that is, rescue from a bad situation is only a fraction, not all, of one’s responsibility. The only way lifesaving lasts is if the principles are applied throughout the animal’ life, not just at the point of rescue.

For anyone who loves animals, a pet culture like ours can be sorrowful at times, so my overall goal is to help heal this situation, one person and one animal at a time. How I work to do that might seem counterintuitive at first. For example, I prioritize truth-telling over comfort. My goal is to accomplish both, but I won’t tell people what they want to hear if it only serves to make them feel good but doesn’t help them and their animals meet their needs. Everything I do in my practice is designed to best ensure animal well-being throughout life by ensuring that humans understand, are willing, and are able to do what is needed for their own sake as well as their animals. Of course the result is a higher level of well-being for the humans involved as well. After all, animal lovers want what is best for an animal. Accomplishing that is a source of pride as well as peace of mind for people.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

Jean Donaldson and her book The Culture Clash — a must read for all dog lovers, whether trainers/behavior pros or not — which covers not just basics of dog training, but more importantly, the subtle ways we have, as a sometimes confused pet culture, ironically tended to punish dogs just for being dogs. I especially appreciated her sad but true section on dog “death penalty.”

Dr. Susan Friedman deserves huge gratitude for her efforts to ensure that those using Applied Behavior Analysis in their work with animals do so in a do no harm way. She explains how “effectiveness alone is not enough.” If something is effective (or seems effective at the time) but also causes fear, intimidation, pain, distress, etc., it’s probably not an appropriate choice. I like to expand the rule to: Effectiveness alone is not enough; we must be effective while also being kind, and ensuring the animal feels safe and comfortable.

Last but not least, Jessica Pierce, for her unwavering devotion to the respect and well-being of animals and her willingness to keep speaking up for them.

Website: www.caninefearsolutions.com AND www.fearfuldogsproject.org AND www.expertcanine.com AND www.sculptedsea.com (I’m also a visual artist)

Other: I have all of the above but prefer to direct to my websites as those are most consistently monitored.

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