Way back in March I started thinking about amazing humans I know who were sometimes overlooked in their circles. I was worried about COVID, and as a social justice advocate, I was aware of and distressed by the lack of any real diversity in the animal world I inhabit.
I reached out to a couple of people and said ” let’s do something”. They said, “Yes, and can we invite this person, that person?” So we did.
This thing, it grew organically. People said “can I play?”, “can I do another webinar?”, “oh I could join that panel!”. And we collaborated. We pitched ideas. We did little trial runs and we started whispering the idea to some people we thought would want in as founders.
What’s a founder?
They were exciting and supportive. (Founder spots are open until Sunday, August 23 – and founders get the entire album of webinars for only $250 instead of the $700 buying each webinar would cost) You can learn more about the founders’ program here! It really is a win-win thing – and we are all SO GRATEFUL to our founders – I hope some of you come on board as contributors to the next album)
The Alphabet Album
From this, The Alphabet Album was born. We wanted to raise voices, and introduce people with important things to say about animals, particularly dogs and horses and learning and competing together in a way to make help us be our best selves.
It’s a series of webinars – both live if you can make it and recorded for you to enjoy and revisit afterward.
But it’s not just: here’s a topic people think will sell well so buy it and never watch it and that’s ok. Topics encourage critical thinking, application of information to YOUR own experience and are diverse and inclusive.
I’ve had the honour of watching two of the recorded webinars so can say with some knowledge – these are different. These are thought-provoking and magical. People are sharing their knowledge and giving you better skills and tools to make your training life easier but they are also sharing their passion. The things that make their heart sing. It’s exciting and it’s important.
A review of two webinars
Tom Harrison’s webinar about The Morals and Ethics of Working and Playing with Non-Human Persons is a legal and history trip into issues that are tough to think about sometimes. It’s funny, it’s bold and it’s important. It runs live Wednesday, August 26th at noon ET but you can watch the recording later if that’s better for you. I really hope you can join him as I suspect the conversation after the presentation will be fascinating too.
Julie Symon’s and Holly Bushard joined forces for Behind Closed Doors which is a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion of three of the big questions in scent work. I got some really excellent ideas to test in terms of practical application and some insight into the reasons talented and successful trainers like these two superstars sometimes have different approaches to training and trialling. It’ll be running live on August 31 at 3 pm. It truly knocked my socks off (fittingly as Holly has a webinar coming up on using socks in scent work too!)
Each webinar (and you can see the ever-evolving list here as we keep working on the tech pieces) also has a bonus webinar within its storage space. We all collaborated on an on-demand webinar to share some of our favourite ways to save time, energy and money and still do great training.
Thank you!
That’s our gift to you for purchasing a webinar and supporting the amazing voices you want to hear!
Accessibility matters to each of us. Together, we ARE stronger.
Have a question? You know how to get me! Or leave a comment and I will committ to checking them!
Oh… one last thought – please go ahead and share any of the links – or this blog … the whole point of the project is getting voices heard – hard to do if people don’t know about it! Thanks so much!
