Carefree Companion: An Advanced Certification Program for Animal Professionals
A comprehensive continuing education program for animal professionals
What is the program?
The Carefree Companion program brings together our combined 50 years experience in animal behavior and training science and application. The goal of the program is to help animals living with people learn better stress coping skills. The Carefree Companion program is inspired by dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a program developed for humans who experience a decreased quality of life as a result of difficulty regulating their emotions and behavior.
What is DBT?
The goal of DBT is to provide skills for effectively navigating everyday life and coping with stress to create a life worth living.
Human-facing, fully adherent DBT programs involve several components to ensure plentiful support throughout the learning process:
Scheduled appointments with individual therapists (in our case, animal behavior professionals)
Group coaching and practice sessions where clients learn to apply skills in real-world situations
Additional support between sessions to help clients navigate challenges
Consultation and support for the individual provider from other certified professionals
Many aspects of this type of program could be transformational for companion animals. The Carefree Companion program focuses on developing the following skills for the caregiver and/or animal:
Acceptance
Impulse control
Emotional regulation
Managing high arousal
Planning and evaluation
Observation and awareness
Promoting healthy and secure human-animal relationships
In addition, animal professionals will be taught the following principles/skills to promote their support of their clients:
Stress and its impacts
Assessing welfare and well-being
Promoting resilience
Scientific literacy (interpretation, analysis, and application of research)
Successful development of professional-client relationships
Coaching skills for effective human learning
Development of ethics policies
Program development and pricing guidelines
Collecting data and using it to improve outcomes
Identifying one’s ideal client
Developing one’s brand
Developing effective marketing strategies
Whether your clients live with Komodo dragons or Labrador retrievers,
the Carefree Companion program will help you help them.
What problems does it solve?
For people living with companion animals
Humans living with non-human animals often struggle with stress-related behavior in those animals, which may include destructive behavior, intense reactions to everyday events, excessively demanding behavior, and an inability to behave in accordance with societal norms for non-human animals on a day-to-day basis.
All of this creates stress for the humans, as well as exacerbating the stress the non-human animal experiences. In some cases the stress is so great that non-human animals are relinquished, rehomed, or worse.
The primary objective of Carefree Companion is to help both non-human animals and their caregivers develop better stress resilience. Improved stress resilience leads to decreased problematic behavior and a better relationship between the human and non-human members of the household.
For Professionals
Break free from the frustration! Offer a program that equips both clients and their animals with essential skills for building healthy, effective relationships.
Join a community that helps you provide comprehensive support and ensure that clients can successfully learn and apply these essential skills not just in class or training sessions, but in everyday life!
Get social support and professional guidance specifically designed for behavior consultants, so that you are no longer navigating challenging cases on your own.
Say goodbye to the stress of keeping up with and interpreting scientific research. We'll handle it for you and teach you how to do it yourself, so you can leverage future discoveries.
Take your career to new heights by improving the client experience and achieving new levels of success in your cases.
Reduce burnout and job demands through increased support and success.
Increase client engagement.
Who is it for?
Carefree Companion is currently aimed at pet professionals who want to help clients:
Prevent behavior challenges by raising emotionally healthy, happy animals
Overcome struggles related to the behavior of their non-human-animal companion.
Carefree Companion is for any pet professional who feels frustrated or stuck when dealing with cases involving animals experiencing a great deal of emotional turmoil or other stress - or who wishes they could prevent that emotional distress in the first place.
While the public-facing portion of the program will not be launched until 2025, Carefree Companion is also for anyone who wants their non-human animal companions to live better, less stressed lives.
In addition, Carefree Companion is a great program for anyone who struggles with their non-human animal companion’s behavior on a day-to-day basis.
Sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date!
Help pet parents & companion animals everywhere live better!
ABOUT US
Dr. Kristina Spaulding and Irith Bloom are sought-out speakers and renowned experts in the field of animal behavior.
Irith Bloom is a certified professional trainer and behavior consultant, as well as a certified TAGteacher.
Dr. Spaulding has a Ph.D. in biopsychology — the study of the biological basis of behavior.
Both Irith Bloom and Dr. Kristina Spaulding love the science of behavior and have a wealth of experience teaching both people with companion animals and other pet professionals.
Follow Us On Social Media!
