This week we are honored to sit down with Juliana DeWillems, the owner of JW Dog Training & Behavior Consulting, star of our e-course, Attention Unlocked, and the author of the new book, “Manage It! Hacks for Improving Your Dog’s Behavior.” Juliana told us all about the process of publishing her first book, why the topic of management is so important in life with dogs and how it could help your dog, and how you can get started writing your own book if that’s your dream.

Congrats on your new book! How did you decide you wanted to write this book about management?

Thank you! Over the past decade of working with training clients 1-on-1 it became clear to me that management is one of the most valuable tools for providing guardians with immediate relief from many challenging behavior issues. Despite the effectiveness of management, it’s not mainstream or, in my opinion, talked about enough! So I wrote this book to get information about management to the masses. 

A lot of people (though likely not our wonderful readers) still think of management as “cheating” or “not a real solution.” Tell us a bit about how you think about management and the role it can play in our lives with our animals.

Society has dumped a lot of baggage on dog guardians about how dogs should and shouldn’t behave, and what a “well trained” dog looks like. The problem is, these standards rarely match up with the wonderful, personality-filled, normally-behaving dogs we have in our homes, and a lot of times we feel shame around our dog’s behavior or how much training we think we should do with them. The great news is that management can solve problems and dramatically improve the lives of people and dogs. I don’t see any downside to that! I dive deeper into this in the book, but my favorite saying is: management is good enough if it’s good enough for you.

We know that you have a dog and cats at home now. How do you use management to help them thrive?

Physical separation using gates and closed doors has helped us the most. Having such an easy way to separate my dog from the cats gives everyone the opportunity to take a break, relax, and recharge for more coexisting time. 

Christie had some BTS access to your writing journey, but tell us a bit about what the process was like for writing this book?

It was a two year process from pitch to publish. Over those two years it was so crazy watching my idea come to life! It felt great to have the space to really expand on topics I feel passionate about (normally I am stuck to an Instagram-length caption), but I still felt surprised when the words sort of fell out of me as I wrote it. What I learned through the process is that writing the book is only half the work. Editing it and taking the 80+ photos took just as much time, though I’m grateful for all the back-and-forth with my publisher because it turned it into a really strong resource for anyone with a dog. 

If someone in our community wants to publish a book, how would you recommend they get started?

Start writing! Most publishers require at least a detailed outline and plan, if not a full manuscript, before offering you a contract. Then research publishers and learn about their submission process.

What is one of your other  favorite dog training books and why? 

I think Kathy Sdao’s Plenty in Life is Free did a lot for how we look at our relationship with dogs. When it came out in 2012 it offered a really impactful reframe from the old, yet pervasive, idea that dogs need to work for everything we give them (“Nothing In Life is Free” was a popular training protocol at the time, even among positive reinforcement trainers). 

When you’re not reading or writing about dog training, what else do you like to read (or watch)? 

Anything totally unrelated to dogs, lol. I love all the trendy romance books these days—Colleen Hoover, Emily Henry, Taylor Jenkins Reid, etc. It’s so nice to get lost in a story that takes me out of my work brain!

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