Interview with Lynn Ungar on Dogs, Writing, and Ministry
Interview conducted by: Ran Courant-Morgan, M.S., BCBA, LABA, CCUI, ADT-IAABC, LFPE
At DBI we believe that no person, no family, and certainly no dog trainer or behaviorist is an island. If you read our blog regularly, you already know that we believe that if you are a behavior analyst by profession, you are not your dog’s behavior analyst. But you may not know that we often collaborate with other dog training professionals to increase our knowledge and skills, and when we are working with a client whose behavioral presentation falls beyond our scope or expertise. Collaboration with other qualified professionals is a huge part of our work. It allows us to provide the most ethical and effective treatment for the dogs we work with, and also helps us build a wonderful community committed to making lives better for dogs and their people.
To that end, we include interviews with some of the amazing professionals who we collaborate with and who work with dogs across a variety of settings and locations. Our goal in doing this is to introduce you, our readers, to people who work in a variety of areas in the dog world but who share a common mission of increasing your dog’s welfare.
Ran here! I first heard of Lynn Ungar when her poem, Pandemic, went viral in 2020. Shortly after that, her name popped up in a Clicker Expo chat. I was like, “Is that the person who wrote the poem?” and I looked her up - just to discover that, on top of being a dog person who wrote beautiful poetry, Lynn is also a Unitarian Universalist minister (I am a lifelong UU!). Given how many overlapping interests we have, I reached out to see if she would be interested in speaking with me about dogs, writing, and ministry - and thank goodness she was! Keep reading below to learn more about Lynn, dancing dogs, the intersection of ministry and behavior change, and more.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am a Unitarian Universalist Minister. I have been for something like 30 years. I've served in parish ministry, I've done religious education, I worked for a lot of years with the Church of the Larger Fellowship, which is an online UU church. I'm not now serving a congregation, but I am the co-moderator of the Facebook group, the UU Hysterical Society, which has something like 235,000 members. We have more members of the UUHS than there are members of the UUA. So that's one piece of who I am and what I do.
Another piece is that I'm a poet. I have been for a long time. I have 4 books of poetry. That's another thing I do and a way that I'm out in the world. I'm puzzling the phrase out in the world because I’m also lesbian. And the dog training is an avocation that I've done for a long time, but I've also taught dog training classes. I'm currently teaching an online freestyle class, and I have some private students who come to me for obedience or freestyle lessons. And I'm an assistant (“flock guardian”) with Hannah Brannigan's Zero to CD program. That program so I get to hang out with kind of the best of the best.
And speaking of hanging out with the best of the best, I'm also one of the founders of LIMA Beings, which is hard to define. It’s a membership program designed for people to explore how we use LIMA, positive reinforcement principles that we have learned training animals, in our relationships with people. That was a kind of amazing thing that happened, and we just celebrated our third anniversary. So that's currently Dr. Chris Pachel and Kathy Sdao and Barrie Finger and me, and then Marissa Martino was one of the other founders but had to step out after a while. And then the members of the group are just another fabulous group of people. And Trisha McConnell was part of the origin story of LIMA Beings.
Last time I went to Clicker expo, I was like I'm going to follow Kathy Sdao around, I'm going to follow Hannah Brannigan around and sit at her feet. These are people that, this time, I actually know. It turns out they are in fact just as cool as I thought they were.
How did you get into dog training?
When I was 11, I finally managed to nag my parents over the course of many years into letting me have a dog because they figured that maybe I would go outside and not spend all of my time in my room reading, and that would probably be a better thing. My wonderful mother actually got allergy shots so that she could have a dog in the house. I have always been one of those animal-crazed kind of kids. So at 11 I finally coerced them into letting me have a dog (the horse was never going to happen).
And they were like, “Well, it's gonna be your dog. You're gonna need to train it.” I'm like, “Yay!” I looked in the paper for where there might be classes. I found somebody local who it turns out was a nationally known obedience competitor. And so I started with the basic class and I just kept taking classes. And then I ended up assisting with classes and getting another dog and showing in obedience. There weren't the variety of dog sports then that there are now. They were maybe vaguely inventing agility, but it wasn't the thing that is now. Obedience was what there was that you did. It was a thing to do with dogs and I just happened into classes with someone who was really good at what she did and who was very supportive of me.
What kind of dog did you end up getting for your first dog?
The first dog was a corgi, because my dad, who was the one most opposed to getting a dog, sort of said, I like corgis. I'm like, “Cool. I want a dog.” I got another Corgi. And then I got a Belgian Tervuren.
Who are your dogs now?
I have Kinzie. She'll be 2 in a month. She's all the things, a magical little being, just beautiful and amazing and also like, “I would like to cause some chaos just because I think it would be fun. Did you see I have your sock? What happens if I bark at you?”
Then there’s Tesla, he’s 9. Last I had him at the vet, she was like, oh, he seems very calm for an Aussie. I'm like, he's 9 years old. You can’t start out that way! He's a sweetheart.
What do you do with them?
A lot. So we do obedience, we do rally, we do agility, and my favorite is canine musical freestyle so we do dog dancing and rally free. Tesla is one of 6 dogs that have gotten the title of Trifecta Grand Champion by getting Grand Champion in both categories of freestyle and in rally free as well.
Have you watched the Hulu Documentary The Secret Life of Dancing Dogs? How did you feel about that?
Yeah. Actually, mostly people make fun of freestyle, so the fact that they did it with people who were really good and going to Crufts was a thing that I really appreciated. You got to see the really good version.
Jen Fraser, who has Daiquiri the Aussie in Canada, is actually part of the reason I have Kinzie. Kinzie’s from the same breeder as Daiquiri. I saw the Crufts routine and when my friend said, “Are you still looking for a performance Aussie with a tail? Because I'm getting one and the litter turned out to have 10.” That's from the same breeder as Daiquiri, I'm liking what I see on that dog. We’ve got 2 intermediate freestyle titles and 2 legs on her intermediate rally free title. So she’s just zooming along!
“The freestyle routines that you create with your dog are your thing with your dog. Having video over the routines that we did over the years is just a really precious kind of thing. ”
It is actually harder than anything else. It's very difficult, which is why I'd like it because you never run out of stuff to train. And if you have a dog like Kinzie who's like, “And what are we doing now?” then you can always do something new. But it's a very long string of behaviors that have to be right on the cue in order to go with the music. It's a big ask of a dog. Remembering what the hell you're doing is hard. And then figuring out what you're going to do with your body while you're doing it and cueing the dog is hard. It's very challenging, but it's also super fun. And you create this thing, you and your dog.
I lost my oldest Aussie in December and I have videos of us dancing that are things. An obedience routine is a thing that everybody else does but the freestyle routines that you create with your dog are your thing with your dog. Having video over the routines that we did over the years is just a really precious kind of thing. It's such intense training and you are dancing together. The more together a dog sport is, the more I like it.
I'm dying to know what were the books that you loved as a kid that had dogs and animals in them. Do you remember?
Oh, there were a bunch of books by Jim Kjelgaard, some of which were wild animals and some of which were dogs. Albert Payson Terhune with the collies. I read a lot of horse books. I can't remember the name of the author, a kids book: there was a girl with Cerebral Palsy, but there was a Westie involved (Note from Ran: we found it!). You name it, if there's a classic children's book with animals, I read it.
Also Dr. Dolittle and the Anne McCaffrey dragon books. It's that wanting the ability to communicate with animals, that's why the freestyle. The reason I do all of the dogs sport stuff is that I have this from childhood. What I want is this ability to communicate with this other being. I want to have that kind of connection. And I am not a psychic animal communicator. That is not in my repertoire. But the relationship that you have with a dog that you do that much stuff with, you just develop a kind of communication. That's what I always wanted.
I would love your thoughts on how to write about dogs. In some of my writing groups, sometimes the writing is too specific to a particular dog and the reader might be left out, or sometimes the writing is overly sentimental. Do you write about dogs? What, to you, makes good writing about dogs?
I have written a couple of poems that involve dogs, but I don't mostly write about dogs yet.
“What makes a poem interesting is that whatever it is, points you to some larger kind of truth or observation. I think what people want out of what they read is to get a new perspective on themselves, to have something that they relate to. ”
I write poetry because poetry is a way of using small things as metaphors to point to larger things. And on occasion dogs have been involved in that but a poem about a dog being a dog is not interesting because the poem is interesting because it's a metaphor that leads you to something that's bigger. A poem about a that is just about a dog is not interesting, in the way that a poem that is just about a chair is not interesting because what makes a poem interesting is that whatever it is, points you to some larger kind of truth or observation. I think what people want out of what they read is to get a new perspective on themselves, to have something that they relate to.
Like Trish McConnell's The Education of Will. She's a wonderful writer. It's basically a memoir, but it's sort of the parallel of dealing with her own PTSD and her dog's reactivity. It's not a dog training book. It's a powerful memoir that has this kind of parallel between her struggle to live in this world and her dog’s struggles to live in this world. If you are a dog person, it's particularly compelling because: dogs. It is a book about a dog, but it's not a book about a dog. It's a book about “How do you live in this world?” Which is a question that we all have.
What are some of the other dog books that you might recommend? Both for someone who just likes dogs and likes reading, or for someone who might say, I'm getting a new dog soon, what should I read?
I enjoy a good dog mystery. So Susan Conant’s dog mysteries with the Malamutes, and Laurien Berenson’s dog mysteries with the poodles, super fun. I've been reading these people's books for years. They both involve dog shows and stuff in a way that I'm like, yeah, dog shows, but they're cozy mysteries. They're just fun.
If you're interested in obedience, Hannah Brannigan's Awesome Obedience is first-rate.
Denise Fenzi** has written a series of books with Deb Jones that are really good.
Julie Flannery's Joy of Heeling is a fun book for heeling. Those are probably my favorites.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how your work training dogs influences your work as a minister and a writer, or the other way around.
The more time I have spent with positive reinforcement training, the more it's become a world view, and the more I have been mystified that we don't apply the things that we know about behavior.
The LIMA Beings group is really at the intersection of the dog training and the ministry.
It is basically a theological stance to say: I wish to operate in the world in a way based in kindness, based in connection. But also based in trying to build things the way that I want them to be, and the presumption that the most efficient way to get there is through kindness and connection.
When you start looking at things, you see that punishment in and of itself is a kind of religion, in the sense that people have faith in its efficacy. When punishment isn't working, the solution is more punishment. But if you look at systems of incarceration, you go, “Um, are we achieving the goals that we might like?”
If you were creating a plan for a zoo animal that was engaging in destructive behavior, you would start with, “What do we want it to look like?” And it just strikes me that in so many areas of our lives, giant systems and our personal lives, and small systems like churches, we could start with “What's the picture that we are trying to get? And so how can we frame a plan that would get us to that picture we would like to get?” As opposed to “Who was at fault for the reason that things are wrong and how can we stop them from being at fault?”
For me, ministry and religion, in the good version, is about operating from that place of “Our faith is in fact in kindness, in compassion, in choice. In building a world that is, just incrementally, better than what it was before.” To me, that commitment is a faith stance. I am putting my faith in connection, in reinforcement, in love and compassion. The great thing is that the training is the application. Here is the technology of how you do that.
“For me, ministry and religion, in the good version, is about operating from that place of “Our faith is in fact in kindness, in compassion, in choice. In building a world that is, just incrementally, better than what it was before.” To me, that commitment is a faith stance. I am putting my faith in connection, in reinforcement, in love and compassion. The great thing is that the training is the application. ”
The definition of punishment is that it decreases behavior. If you want someone to do something, you cannot punish them into doing a thing. By definition, you could only punish somebody into not doing something. So if somebody says a thing and you come down on them for saying the wrong thing, or for not saying it right, or for not saying it good enough, you can stop them from saying more things. But if you want somebody to go do a thing, that’s not going to work.
Guilt tripping people about a thing that they haven't done isn't going to make anybody do it! Whether or not they should have is irrelevant. You could certainly argue that if you're going to care about this, you should care about that, and if you're going to do this thing, you should have done that. You might not be wrong, but it doesn't matter because it's not going to accomplish anything.
There are a lot of reasons for people to be angry that are totally legitimate reasons. But if the question is “How do I change people's behavior?”, that's a separate thing. You should not expect that your legitimate anger is an effective way of changing somebody else's behavior. It's not that you can't be angry about things that there are to be angry about, but the assumption that being angry therefore changes other people's behavior, I just don't think the evidence is there that it's true.
I’m a very practical person. In terms of ethics, I think that things should work better. It bothers me that people so rarely behave in the ways that are most likely to achieve the outcomes that they say that they want.
For someone who is interested in getting started in any of these areas that you're involved in - dog training, writing, ministry - what might you recommend?
It's a very different answer depending on the area. I will give you a unified answer: Find your reinforcement. If there's a thing that you want to do, figure out what it is about it that you like, so that you can do more of that.
There are a lot of people who like writing in theory and don't like writing in practice, which is logical cause it's difficult. So if you don't have a sense going in of “This is what keeps me doing it,” then you're not going to do it. Particularly if you're writing a novel which is a really long process. Like, what are splits of a novel? What are the reinforcers along the way?
Just as an example, my friend was writing a novel. We talked weekly just to give feedback and support.
If what you want to do is dog sports: there are a lot of them and they're really different from one another. You could choose based on what your dog likes to do, or based on what's available in your area, or just based on who the people are that you like. People should know that there's a lot of terrific online stuff available. Fenzi Dog Sports Academy* has tons of really high quality stuff online. But also, it's kind of more fun to do things with other people.
Find Lynn at:
Freestyle class with Town and Country Dog Training Club.
Poetry at https://lynnungar.com/
LIMA Beings at limabeings.com/
**You may or may not know that, at the Dog Behavior Institute, our values are an essential part of everything we do. Unfortunately, our values do not align with those of Fenzi Dog Sports Academy (FDSA). After discussion with Lynn, we have chosen to include her recommendations in this interview, but with this note that we do not recommend FDSA.