School For The Dogs' Sasha Prasad on helping animals live happier lives

Sasha Prasad moved to New York City with her three rescue dogs last year in order to get a masters degree in Animal Behavior and Conservation from Hunter. She began working at School For The Dogs right away, and has been with us ever since, doing everything from walking to client relations to social media. Her passion is helping all animals live happier lives; dogs are just one of the creatures she wants to work with. She and Annie discuss how she built her own dog walking company, Freedom Tails, in Boston, her shelter-based education in dog behavior, and her current work: researching how to make koi fish live happier, more enriched lives. Learn more about Sasha at http://SashaPrasad.com Articles by Dr. Becca Franks: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zBb257kAAAAJ&hl=en --- Partial Transcript: [Intro and music] Annie: So I think I’ve said this before and I don’t want to sound self-congratulatory, but I have to say Kate and I have really great people working for us at School for the Dogs. I am. So just thrilled, thrilled to have a team of people who have these special talents and interests. I’m thrilled to have these people working towards the same goal altogether under the School for the Dogs umbrella. The goal of helping dogs and people live happier lives together. And I feel especially I don’t know, sort of sappy about it. I think just because this has been such a difficult year for pretty much everyone in the world. And one thing, one blessing, one silver lining has been that I feel like it’s brought our staff closer together and just made me all the more grateful. So today I am sharing with you a conversation I had with Sasha Prasad. Sasha has been with School for the Dogs for over a year now. But you maybe haven’t met her at the studio because especially lately, she does a lot of behind the scenes stuff. She does a lot of our Instagramming, the wonderful roundups we do on the weekend. And she also is the person who answers a lot of emails that come into our info box. But Sasha is an animal trainer in her own right. Currently working with fish, actually. So I’m excited to share this conversation she and I had. Annie: Hi. Sasha: Hello. The lighting where you are as beautiful. You are glowing. Annie: I’m right in the window. Sasha: Yeah, amazing. Annie: So I am psyched to get to talk to Sasha Prasad and to see your little dog there. Sasha: Yeah. Chloe is here, Lilo’s down here. Jackson will probably make himself heard at some point. So the gang’s all here. Annie: You’re a three dog, three dog household in New York City. Sasha: Yeah. Not on purpose, but here we are. So. Annie: Aw. And I know one of them, one of them has been in hospice care — at home hospice care. Is that right? Sasha: Yeah. It’s been a pretty wild ride. So Lilo, she’s 17. We brought her to the emergency vet sometime in late August and they told us she was in kidney failure and that she had a couple of days to a couple of weeks left. But here we are going on a month. Behaviorally, she’s a little slower and I have to do a lot more coaxing to get her to eat, but she’s eating full meals. She’s still doing the things that she likes to do. She’s going for walks. And so, I don’t know. We’re really grateful and we’re taking it one day at a time. Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe