I’m so excited to introduce you to today’s guest, Surabhi Venkatesh! Surabhi is a certified dog behaviour and nutrition coach based in India, and she founded Luchi and Mutton’s after her own two rescue pups presented challenges that required her to look deeper, taking a whole dog - and whole human - approach.

In this episode, we have a candid conversation about some of the challenges we have both faced with our own dogs, and all the complexities of being dog parents to complex dogs. We also talk about how meeting our dogs with radical empathy in their healing journeys, made us realise the need for approaching ourselves with that same level of empathy in our own healing journeys. If you have got a complex dog, and honestly even if you don’t, I know you’ll find value in hearing this.

Surabhi shares her experience of studying with Sindhoor Pangal at BHARCS in Bangalore where she learned about asking the why of our dog’s behaviours, and how to hold space for our dogs’, and our own, big feelings. Oh my goodness, there are just so many nuggets in this chat, truthfully too many to list! Surabhi is such a wonderful human, and her approach to dogs is inspiring.

We do touch on some aspects of nutrition and different cultural approaches to feeding our dogs, but we’re saving a deep dive into that for a future episode. So, if there’s something you’d like us to address when it comes to canine nutrition and how to best support your dog’s health through food, let me know, and I’ll make sure that we address it! Just DM me on Instagram @mysticdogmama

Just a note that this episode was sponsored by Aspirationery, which, in full transparency, is another project of mine where we create books, notebooks, and stationery to help you become all you aspire to be. You can check out our shadow work and moon magic journals and workbooks, as well as our popular “My First Period Tracker” for young girls and tweens on Instagram @aspirationery.

Ok, let’s go!

To learn more about Surabhi, how to work with her, and her podcast, visit her website https://luchiandmuttons.com

To learn more about BHARCS, visit: https://www.bharcs.com/

TIME STAMPS

00:22 Intro

03:15 Meet Surabhi and hear her journey into canine nutrition and behaviour because of her rescue dogs, Luchi and Mutton : “How do I just keep this dog alive??” to “How do we survive this??”

12:50 BHARCS - a relationship approach to dogs with your dog as your teacher

14:10 Understanding pet guardianship as an opportunity to reparent yourself

25:35 Leaning into what we are experiencing vs what we think we should be experiencing

38:00 It takes a village to raise a dog - finding safe spaces to support yourself in your journey with your dog

41:20 Surabhi’s experience of empathy-based dog training through BHARCS

51:00 A new perspective on resource guarding: not sharing your dessert!

54:45 Evolutions in dog-human relationships: emotions

56:40 The need for diversity in our conversations about dogs

1:12:00 Discounting the “magic bullet” for our dogs’ health

1:23:00 How to connect with Surabhi and learn about her podcast + what Luchi and Mutton taught Surabhi about what it means to be human

1:25:00 Outro