The Resilience Framework - Pittsburgh, PA

We’re super excited to be presenting IN PERSON!

Resilience is the ability to adapt successfully to or recover quickly from stressful events, situations, and conditions. Resilience relies on effective responses to environmental change, and resistance to the negative effects of stress, therefore a thorough understanding of the factors which influence these mechanisms is fundamental to raising and living with our dogs and other companion animals.

Whether a professional in the behavior field or a competitor of dog sports, we must consider resilience when creating training programs or addressing behavior issues. Most dogs around the world no longer live quietly by the fireside, roaming open spaces, without restrictions; and as society continues to change, our cities get busier and our lives more hectic, it's not only humans that benefit greatly from an ability to adjust and adapt.

Stress and trauma can have a substantial impact on brain function and structure, and can result in the development of behavioral abnormalities. But not all animals exposed to stressful events develop behavioral abnormalities and those animals that don’t are said to be resilient. So what is different about the way the brains of those animals function, and how can we, as carers, influence brain function to improve resilience in animals? An understanding of resilience mechanisms is therefore at the heart of being able to effectively influence behavior.

Eliminating all stress in life is impossible and is never the goal of training. Instead, the goal is to help a learner acquire the skills which enable them to process stressful experiences and grow more resilient from them. In this 2-day seminar, we will use a model founded on scientific principles, which was created by our experts here at Behavior Vets. The Resilience Framework represents seven domains around which an individualized training plan can be created which will support the dog’s development and help them build resilience; we are calling it the Resilience Rainbow.

What interventions and exercises are most effective in building resilience? How do they help, and how can you implement them? What does a Resilience Conditioning training plan based around The Resilience Framework look like? What are the advantages of this approach?

To learn more about how to teach the animals in your charge to condition and support resilience, join us for a two-day seminar:

Resilience…

• What is it?
• What's its purpose?
• How does it develop?
• What are the neurobiological mechanisms associated with it?
• Why is it important?
• How does an understanding of it help us?
• How do we measure it?
• Which factors influence it?
• How can we improve it?

Neuroscientist and Veterinarian, Dr. Kathy Murphy, and Certified Dog Behavior Consultant, Bobbie Bhambree, will answer these questions, and more, throughout a two-day seminar. You’ll learn evidence-based approaches to assessing and building a dog's ability to adapt, adjust, and recover. This will be an opportunity to look at an important topic in behavior through a multidisciplinary lens. Whether you are an animal trainer, veterinary professional, animal behaviorist, animal enthusiast, or someone interested in dog sports, there will be something here for you.

Want to find out what a resilience plan would look like for one of your cases??? We will choose 1-2 case studies per location, submitted by in-person participants for that location before the event (submission form will be emailed two weeks before the event), and work through them together applying The Resilience Framework to create an individualized plan.

Other info:

D r. Murphy and Bobbie will be presenting in front of a live audience! This seminar will not be recorded.

Food & Beverages:

We are providing coffee, tea, water, and light snacks throughout the day. Lunch is included if you purchase a ticket including the fee for catering the event. If you did not purchase this ticket option, then you are welcome to bring lunch with you. The venue is located in an industrial area and they don't have food options nearby.

CEUs pending:

• KPA
• PPAB
• IAABC
• CPDT
• RACE

Tuition:

• Early Bird Tickets with Lunch – before April 30, 2024: $???
• General Admission Tickets with Lunch – after april 30, 2024: $???
• Shelter/Rescue/Vet Student/Vet Tech Tickets with Lunch - no expiration date: $???

• Early Bird Tickets – before April 30, 2024: $266
• General Admission Tickets – after april 30, 2024: $299
• Shelter/Rescue/Vet Student/Vet Tech Tickets - no expiration date: $266

Discounts are available for groups of 5 or more - please contact [email protected] for more information.

Cancellation policy: Refunds up to 30 days before the event.

ABOUT DR. MURPHY:

Kathy Murphy (BVetMed, DPhil, CVA, CLAS, MRCVS) is a veterinary surgeon, neuroscientist, and Chief Executive Officer at Behavior Vets. She graduated from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons UK in 1999, initially working in mixed clinical practice before studying for two postgraduate clinical qualifications. In 2009 she was awarded a highly prestigious Wellcome Research Training Fellowship to study for her Ph.D., in Behavioral Neuroscience, at The Queens College, University of Oxford, UK. She subsequently worked in the USA as an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Anesthesiology at the Icahn School of Medicine NYC and is now back in the UK and Director of Barking Brains Ltd (a neuroscience outreach platform for the animal behavior and training community).

Dr. Murphy's clinical interest has always been anesthesia, and analgesia with her residency at the European College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia completed in 2021. In addition to her primary career roles she was Trustee and Veterinary Advisor to the Rottweiler Welfare Association for 14 years, is a founder of Ethics First (a collective that lobbies for ethical decision-making in clinical practice), is an Oversight Committee Member for the UK Dog Behavior and Training Charter, is a guest lecturer in Clinical Animal Behaviour at the University of Edinburgh, sits on numerous National and International boards, working groups and ethical review panels, and most of all love spending time with her own 5 dogs and her husband.

About Bobbie:

Bobbie Bhambree (CDBC, CPDT-KA) is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant and Director of Education at Behavior Vets. She is also a faculty member of CATCH Canine Trainers Academy and Agility University. Bobbie started her career in 2003 as a pet behavior counselor with the ASPCA Animal Behavior Center. While there, she implemented behavior modification programs for dogs surrendered by the public or seized by Humane Law Enforcement. In 2007, Bobbie joined the Humane Society of Westchester, spending the next nine years as their shelter trainer. She created and implemented dog training and enrichment programs, counseled adopters, trained volunteers, participated in community outreach programs, and performed evaluations.

2016 Bobbie joined the North Shore Animal League America in Port Washington, NY as the Director of Pet Behavior. During her tenure there, she managed a team of canine and feline trainers who focused on developing behavior modification and enrichment programs for the animals in the shelter. She also deployed for the ASPCA Anti-Cruelty Behavior Team to work in the field, supporting the team with dog fighting busts, puppy mill cases, and hoarding cases. In addition to this work, she founded and directed her own company, DogCentric Dog Training, helping people whose pet dogs experienced a wide spectrum of canine behavior issues. Bobbie presented at the Lemonade Conference, hosted by IAABC and Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, and at the HeartDog International Wellbeing Summit in 2022. Bobbie is a co-creator of the Resilience Rainbow, a framework for resilience-building interventions.

Over the years, Bobbie has very successfully competed in agility in various venues with several of her dogs including, Marvel who came in third for Performance Speed Jumping and Performance Grand Prix at Mid-Atlantic Regionals in 2019. Bobbie has authored several articles for the agility-focused publication, Clean Run. She is passionate about working with dog sports teams struggling with behavior issues. Bobbie regularly teaches behavior workshops for the dog sports community, including a recent project called Brain Camp.

Bobbie currently shares her life with three terriers, one Pitbull, a border collie/whippet mix, a border collie/Croatian Sheepdog mix (Ziggy, Marvel, Heady Topper, Eleanor Rigby, Phuncky, and Drazen), and a very supportive husband in southern New Jersey.

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