
#32 Caring for Yourself while Caring for a Difficult Dog
From Reward Your Dog Podcast by Verena & Jesse Sutherland
December 3, 2025 · 50 min · Episode 35
About this episode
The episode discusses strategies for dog guardians to maintain their mental health while caring for a difficult dog.
Life with a struggly dog can be really hard. Behavior modification training is often the long game and takes a toll on everyone. How can you as the guardian of a difficult dog with big feelings keep yourself sane as you live with your tricky fur friend? Jesse and Verena send out some empathy for you while discussing some strategies to help you cope with this complex situation. The shoutout goes out to Dog Adventures NW. DANW offers off leash adventures, training, boarding and petsitting in Portland and Salem in Oregon as well as in Atlanta and Denver. We would appreciate your support for the Reward Your Dog Podcast by liking, rating, reviewing, and sharing. It helps us so much! You can also: Join the RYDP Patreon (no paywalls unless you *want* to subscribe) Buy us a coffee And of course you can reach out to Verena help with your dog. More info on Verena and Reward Your Dog Training can be found here: Website Blue Sky Facebook Instagram
People in this episode
Hosts: Verena Sutherland, Jesse Sutherland
Topics covered
- dog behavior
- self-care
- training strategies
- empathy
- pet ownership
- mental health
Keywords
- difficult dog
- behavior modification
- self-care
- pet training
- mental health
- dog ownership
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Dog Adventures NW
Places: Portland, Salem, Oregon, Atlanta, Denver
More episodes of Reward Your Dog Podcast
- Mailbag 3: Finding Places to Exercise Your Dog · May 20, 2026 · 20 min
- #37 "Help! My dog doesn't like people!" - and what you can do about it · April 1, 2026 · 53 min
- #36 "As long as you're under my roof" - Giving our domesticated dogs more agency · February 25, 2026 · 57 min
- #35 How do you know if Dogbook is telling the truth? - Parsing Information & Epistemology w/ Emily Strong of PetHarmony · February 9, 2026 · 1h 1m
- #34 Harnessing the Power of Habits for Good (and for Evil) · January 12, 2026 · 58 min
- #33 Is there hope for my barky, lungy, growly city dog? OR: Resolving urban leash reactivity in 4 steps! · December 17, 2025 · 44 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Reward Your Dog Podcast podcast page.