Anamarie Johnson has been with School For The Dogs for three years, and, in that time, has won us all over with her pep, humor, and training chops. In this episode, we discuss her background in rescue work, her childhood pets (fruit flies and incestuous cats), the wonders of classical conditioning and why squirrels at her college were painted orange and green. Show notes: AnnieGrossman.com/podcast8 Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-stars on iTunes! Annie Grossman owns and operates School For The Dogs in NYC. Studio: SchoolForThedogs.com Shop: StoreForTheDogs.com Facebook: Facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs Instagram: Instagram.com/schoolforthedogs

---

Partial Transcript:



Annie:

So I am here with a woman who I have known for three years. I met her in July, 2015. I could almost tell you the date that's, that's how important this day was to me. And um, and to everyone at School for the Dogs, her name is Anamarie Johnson. She is our general manager and has been training with us for almost three years. And is just the smiliest, sweetest person.  All the dogs love her. I think the people love her too. But Anna Marie, tell us a little bit about how you came to be the ray of sunshine you are at school for the dogs.

Anamarie:

Oh I don't know how I became the ray of sunshine!



Annie:

You were born in a small town in California.



Anamarie:

San Francisco, [laughing] not so much small. Yeah.



Annie:

I picture you raised in the woods by like fairies and bunnies. No?



Anamarie:

No.



[laughing]



Anamarie:

I was raised in Daly city, but, uh, basically grew up in San Francisco and there were no fairies and bunnies in my backyard. The fact that we got a squirrel that came to my house in high school was like the biggest moment of my mom's life.  It's a running joke actually that, my friend was at my house and my mom just started screaming for everyone in the whole house to come look out the back window because the squirrel had arrived in the back,



Annie:

The squirrel had arrived?



Anamarie:

We didn’t get squirrels in Daly City.



Annie:

What color squirrel was it?



Anamarie:

Brown squirrel.



Annie:

Brown?  Have you seen black squirrels? Is that like a New York thing? The black squirrel?



Anamarie:

We don't have, I mean, we didn't have black squirrels in California. It was just the brown boring, you know, whatever. Gray squirrels. And then where I went to college at UC Davis, I mean we're overrun with squirrels. That was actually a funny thing. Like one day on campus, all of a sudden all the squirrels were, some of the squirrels were spray painted and it was actually a big issue. Cause Davis has like a really big animal department and everything like that. They had actually um, taken and they were spray painting squirrels because they were giving--



Annie:

Who's they?



Anamarie:

Like one of the departments, one of the like the animal research departments because they wanted to test a prophylactic on the squirrels. So they were giving some of the male squirrels and drugs to make them uh, not reproduce because the squirrel population was crazy.  So they wanted to have like a noninvasive way.



Annie:

So what color were they spray painting them?



Anamarie:

They were like green and orange.



[laughing]



Anamarie:

And then there was all these like poor undergrads on campus that were sitting on little corners and they were recording cause they wanted to see preemptively if this, whatever drug they were giving them was affecting their “natural” behaviors, so to speak...



Full transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe