Two Problems, One Partnership: Rescue Dogs, Yard Dogs, and the Power of Reciprocity

What happens when we stop asking dogs to fit our lives — and start building lives that work for both ends of the leash?

In this episode of The Human-Canine Alliance Podcast, Stacie sits down with professional dog trainer Kassidy King, owner of Pack Daddy Dog Training to explore how training, responsibility, and reciprocity can transform both dogs and humans — especially those who feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or misunderstood.

Kassidy shares her personal journey into training through her dog Lana, the lessons that reshaped her approach to reactivity and expectations, and why connection must come before control. The conversation expands into her work with the Pawsitive Change Program, where rescue dogs are trained alongside incarcerated individuals inside prison yards — creating structure, purpose, and mutual trust for both.

You’ll also hear about:

• Why focusing on a dog’s “flaws” breaks relationships — and how to shift that mindset
• How responsibility and routine can support mental health in real life
• The role of training as a missing piece in adoption success
• The impact of prison-based dog training programs like Pawsitive Change and Marley’s Mutts’ Mutt Movers, which help relocate rescue dogs to new adoption opportunities

The episode closes by connecting these real-world experiences to TH-CA’s mission: reimagining rescue through intentional matching, purpose-driven training, and social-prescription-aligned solutions that meet genuine human needs while honoring a dog’s natural strengths.

This conversation is for anyone who:

• Loves dogs but feels stuck or discouraged by dog behavior
• Cares about ethical dog training and rescue reform
• Believes dogs can be wellness partners, not just pets
• Desires solutions to loneliness, responsibility, and connection that create tangible outcomes

Two problems. One partnership. A better way forward for humans and dogs alike.

Episode links & resources:

Pack Daddy Dog Training (Kassidy King)
https://www.packdaddydogtraining.com

Pawsitive Change Program
https://pawsitivechangeprogram.com

Marley's Mutts & Mutt Movers
https://marleysmutts.org

Mental Health & Loneliness as a Public Health Crisis (U.S. Surgeon General)
https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/loneliness/index.html

U.S. Animal Shelter & Euthanasia Statistics
https://www.aspca.org/helping-people-pets/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics

Social Prescribing
https://socialprescribingacademy.org.uk/what-is-social-prescribing/

The Human–Canine Alliance is a patent-pending platform that matches people in need with rescue dogs in need using AI-powered compatibility matching and personalized training prescriptions to improve mental health and reduce dog euthanasia.

🌐 Subscribe to The Alliance Insider: JOIN OUR PACK!

Chapters

• 0:00 When You Only See Your Dog’s Flaws
• 2:10 Training Isn’t Personal (Even When It Feels Like It Is)
• 5:00 Lana: The Dog Who Changed Everything
• 8:15 Letting Go of the Dog You Thought You Had
• 11:20 Meeting Dogs (and Humans) Where They Are
• 14:20 Reciprocity & Responsibility: What Dogs Give Back
• 18:25 Inside Prison Yards: The Pawsitive Change Program
• 21:35 Marley’s Mutts, Mutt Movers & Second Chances
• 23:50 Two Problems, One Partnership
• 25:35 It’s Not That Serious (And That’s the Point)

Transcript

[00:00:00] You start to only focus on the things you don't like about your dog instead of remembering all the things that you love about your dog. And, all I could see were all of her flaws at one point. Which made me not like her and made her not like me. Why would we like each other if all I was doing was pointing out her flaws all the time? 

 Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Human Canine Alliance podcast. I'm Stacie, your host. Today's conversation is about how training can transform both sides of the leash, not just dogs, humans too.

Stacie: My guest today is Kassidy King, a dog trainer whose work spans traditional training, deep human-canine relationship building, and some truly powerful work inside the prison system. Kassidy's approach centers on connection over commands, communication over control, and ethical training that meets both the dog and the human where they are.

Stacie: Kassidy, I'm so grateful for you to be here. Welcome. 

Kassidy: Thank you for having me.

Stacie: So what is one thing you wish more people understood about dog training, especially people who are struggling with a dog?

Kassidy: As somebody who struggled with particularly one of my dogs, I wish if I could go back and tell my younger self something, it would be that it's not that serious, and to take it less personal.

Kassidy: And there's a lot of rhetoric out there in training that can put the blame on the owner for how their dog is acting.

Kassidy: And just from my personal experience, one of my dogs, Lana, she's how I got into training, which I'm sure we'll get into, but she would bite a lot of my foster dogs and then she would randomly attack [00:02:00] them. I took that as a reflection of me for a long time and thought that it was something I was doing wrong.

Kassidy: I think it's really easy when you're really struggling with your dog to kind of do an all or nothing approach. It can feel like everything is so stressful.

Kassidy: But I would forget to do things that she enjoyed.

Kassidy: And so I would take her on these neighborhood walks when that's not what she could do well because she was so reactive.

Stacie: Take us back, how did you get started?

Kassidy: Right after college, I was rescuing and fostering a bunch of dogs and finding homes for them. 

Kassidy: She actually was not my first problem dog when I, like, I had a different foster dog. I had a couple of them that I was like, If I do not figure out how to train this dog, this dog is never gonna get adopted.

Kassidy: So trial and error. But I also I was like, I gotta really lock in and figure something out.

Kassidy: And then Lana was one of my foster dogs at the time, but I loved her so much. I did not wanna find a home for her, so I just never put her up for adoption and I just kept her.

Kassidy: And at the time she was a very social dog. And as all of my other foster dogs got adopted, she was kind of like, okay, now this is my house. Like I run this shit. And once I got another foster dog, she was like, that's not gonna work for me anymore. So she started getting a little bit more territorial controlling of the house.

Kassidy: I also didn't have any like boundaries implemented. She kind of did whatever she wanted and over time I like, I was just like, this isn't gonna work. Like you can't be acting this way.

Kassidy: Um, you don't get to bite every dog that you see. And what I realized was that she was just a really nervous, sensitive, insecure dog. [00:04:00] I wasn't giving her what she needed. And I was also bringing in a lot of chaotic energy because I was bringing in all these other dogs from the shelter.

Kassidy: But I couldn't really see that at the time. So I got into training kind of outta necessity.

 Lana has been my greatest teacher. she's not perfect to this day.

Kassidy: She gets along with my dog, amazingly, my other dog, but I don't release her into a pack of dogs. That's not her version of fun. She doesn't like playing with a bunch of dogs. That stresses her out.

Kassidy: It took me a long time accept that that's not the kind of dog that she is, and that that's not what she wants to do for fun.

Kassidy: Now that I finally understand that , I can bring her anywhere with me. She's such a good dog. 

Kassidy: She's on leash by my side. She's locked in with me all the time. So connected. She listens to me so well. If a dog is like barking or lunging at her, she immediately looks at me and you can tell that that makes her nervous.

Kassidy: And so she wants to come and be by my side and that's great. I don't need her to like go make friends with that dog.

Kassidy: It's just taken a lot of shifting my expectations. And that's what I a lot with my clients on as a dog trainer, of managing client expectations and kind of being like, well, what does your dog actually enjoy?

Kassidy: Because if your dog doesn't enjoy going beach, not gonna make them go to the beach.

Stacie: I was gonna ask, how does this translate into real life when you are not the person who's with them all the time?

Stacie: Because, we have decided that dogs are here to be our man's best friend, but we don't really respect them in the ways that you just described.

Stacie: You were able to step back and recognize, oh my gosh, this dog has a different personality and she doesn't wanna be part of the big crowd.

Stacie: She just wants to hang out here with [00:06:00] me.

Stacie: So, go ahead and tell us how you then apply that to teaching people how to take a step back and maybe look at their dogs from that, that light.

Kassidy: i'm really big on meeting people where they're at and unless it is like a potentially dangerous situation, i've gotten a lot more relaxed and lenient on my training methods.

Kassidy: So, I personally like to give my clients homework that is realistic and give them activities that they can do with their dog. I think it's just really important to find what your dog actually enjoys, because like you said, there is this big culture idea of we see a dog doing something and we want our dog to do that without understanding that that's just not the dog we have. And that's okay.

Kassidy: That's like when your parents are forcing you to do a sport that you actually hate and it's super unfair to kind of put your dog or your kid in a category of something that they just aren't.

Stacie: As you're talking about looking at dogs in the sense of saying, Hey, they might not like that sport, or they might not like that activity.

Stacie: At the same time, we're looking at it from the Human-Canine Alliance perspective and saying, we all know that dogs give us so much back, right?

Stacie: But how do we create real value, put real value on that so that dogs aren't just seen as an emotional support when you need it, if you need it . and so reciprocity in my mind is helping people see dogs for the value that they have to offer because they have so many trainable skills.

Stacie: But they need to be trained, right? Just like as humans, when we're babies, like you just compared it to a kid. Like, you need to be trained. You need to be taught.

Stacie: So one thing we're missing in our society, I believe, is that we don't, we don't include training as part of owning a dog. And so a lot of times we blame [00:08:00] the dog for being the problem or creating the problem. 

Kassidy: a bad dog 

Stacie: Right, exactly. And so that's where I'm introducing reciprocity and saying, alright, I understand where it's really hard to give if you're not getting back.

Stacie: Right. how do we help society see that what we put into dogs, we really do get back? 

Kassidy: a delayed gratification thing. Like you're not gonna see it right away. You know, like it took me a really long time to work through Lana's reactivity and now I can literally take her anywhere and pretty much do anything with her. That took a very long time. And people will hire a trainer.

Kassidy: They don't get the results they want by the end of the hour long session. Then they're just like, I hired a trainer and it didn't work.

Kassidy: And I Use a personal analogy for people. Like you hire a personal trainer and you see them once a week and the rest of the week you just sit on the couch and you don't work out and you don't do anything, you are not going to see the results that you were hoping for.

Kassidy: But when it comes to working with our dogs , even if you do send your dog away or you do a board and train.

Kassidy: You really do expect to just send the dog to me. And then you send them home and they're fixed.

Kassidy: But that's just not the reality of a living being. Everything takes maintenance. A plant, you have to water and trim it. You can't just get it taken care of one time and then it never needs to be done again.

Kassidy: But for some reason with our animals, we don't, don't really get that.

 And I think to your point, what you're trying to say is the way that dogs are good for our mental health is by teaching us responsibility.

Kassidy: And that they do get us up for a walk early in the morning and they make sure we get home on time and we're not out late partying.

Kassidy: But I genuinely think that my dogs waiting for me at home, protected me from a lot of trouble. 

Kassidy: the ways that they were good for me was like, I had to get up early and take care [00:10:00] of them or get home and feed them or make sure that they got a walk. and so I think teaching responsibility and discipline is really for me at least, how they've been good for my mental health.

Stacie: You took that and ran with that in directions I hadn't even taken it yet. 

Stacie: Is a perfect fit because, what I have really honed in on is unless there's a value on something, people don't really recognize or care about it.

Stacie: It doesn't always have to be monetary, but there does have to be a value. You have to be able to say, this is something I see value in my life .

Stacie: And so from that perspective, the way I look at it is if we are able to say, okay, this dog has x, y, z personality and he loves to dig, let's just say dig.

Stacie: And this woman over here is lonely and her favorite thing to do is gardening, right? How do we make those two beings connect and get this dog some training to dig on cue?

Stacie: Next thing you know, this dog is no longer in a cage.

Stacie: This woman is no longer lonely, and they're both in the garden doing exactly what they both love to do. 

Stacie: you are also currently majoring in reciprocity in your prison yard work. If you could tell us a little bit about that, what you're doing in the prison system. 

Kassidy: so I am a trainer for the Pawsitive Change Program, which is a program where we bring rescue dogs into prison yards, and we teach the guys on the yard how to train the dogs.

Kassidy: The dogs will live on the yard for part of the program. And the guys are assigned to a dog. They have to work together as a team, which I think that's the hardest part.

Kassidy: I think getting these guys to work together as a team has been the biggest challenge. But, they teach their dogs training. We teach them how to walk nicely on a leash. We teach them. to sit, stay, just a couple [00:12:00] of like threshold manners.

Kassidy: I got into it because I, I found 'em on Instagram forever ago and I was living in Minnesota at the time and I was like doing my crazy dog rescue stuff.

Kassidy: And I don't know what it was about that program. I tell the guys that like, I don't come from the neighborhoods that they come from. I'm not a product of the system.

Kassidy: My parents never did time, but there was just something that I felt really intrigued, I felt interested in, I had a strong desire to check out the program.

Kassidy: So I moved to California I started my business out here. I joined the program and I'm starting my fourth year with them.

Kassidy: I've been on the same yard for almost two years now. So I've gotten to know the guys pretty well, which has been a really amazing experience just to grow alongside them. ' cause when I started on that yard I was kind of going through a lot and so just to kind of experience like highs and lows together. 

Kassidy: The rescue that puts on the program is called Marley's Mutts.

Kassidy: And they have another program called Mutt Movers that basically just moves a bunch of dogs out of Southern California to like Northern Rescue Partners.

Kassidy: We just had one of the yards foster a litter of puppies for the first time for 10 days while they were awaiting transport.

Kassidy: I've seen, like grown men are skipping around in prison because there's puppies there and that's just something that you don't see in prison yards, and it's something that they don't see.

Kassidy: It's been so special to be participating in programming in these environments has been such a blessing and I feel so grateful to witness these transformations. 

Stacie: Do you have any like specific stories or examples that you wanna share or can share?

Kassidy: We're working with a rescue, so if the dogs get a chance to be adopted, the rescue will pull the dog from the program and they'll go into [00:14:00] their potential adopters home.

Kassidy: And then he might come back. He might not. And the guys don't really know, which is really hard. But they also take a lot of pride in knowing that their time with these dogs are limited and part of rescue is to know when to let them go and to let them go be adopted by their homes.

Kassidy: So this last cohort one of these dogs got pulled halfway through the program to go be adopted. And so we brought in a replacement dog and she was super nervous and super shut down.

Kassidy: I'm really big on getting them to loosen up and I'm always like, you guys need to stop taking everything so serious.

Kassidy: That's what, it's something that I work on and I try to tell myself that all the time. obviously it's like a high level prison yard. So they're kind of like, okay, easy for you to say.

Kassidy: Coming in here and not living this environment, which I totally get, but this dog in particular was super shut down. She was really nervous and I was like, you guys have to start baby talking her. Like, you have to start telling her that she is the sweetest little girl to ever walk the world. Like she is just so cute and we love her so much and she's such a sweet little mama.

Kassidy: And of the guys in particular really ran with it. Like, he was like the star baby talker of the cohort. And after graduation, I brought her back in for a surprise 'cause she wasn't adopted yet. She was back at the ranch.

Kassidy: And I was just seeing the guys and doing some interviews with them and this guy, Jai mae wasn't around.

Kassidy: He was like off at work or something and every time the door would open, she was pretty nervous again. She hadn't been back on the yard in a couple weeks and she was pretty nervous.

Kassidy: She was kinda like, where's he, where's he? 

Kassidy: And then when he came into the back, she knew it was him right away and her whole demeanor changed and it was just so amazing to see how deep their bond was and how valuable their connection was to her too.

Kassidy: Obviously he lit up like he [00:16:00] was so happy to see her, but to see that really change for her was so heartwarming. And it was, it was so fun to share with him that like been back here looking for you. Like she's been sitting here waiting every time the door opens, she's like, is that him? Is that him?

Kassidy: So all types of little moments like that.

Kassidy: There's also a lot of really hard moments and a lot of really heavy moments and I think moments like that really keep, keep you going and just are good reminders that like, that's kind of what we're doing this for.

Kassidy: They write goodbye letters. They write letters to the adopters. And just being able to provide them with some joy through the dogs and see the connections.

Kassidy: The trust that's built. We had a dog named Ajax who like, I couldn't even touch him. He was just nervous and shy and tense, and skeptical of people and watching him flourish with his team and the trust that he built, like he knew that these guys had his back no matter what. And it was so beautiful to see him grow and how much he trusted these guys.

 Okay, quick pause here. See you in a few. BREAK

Stacie: tell us a little bit about your new podcast, Yard Dogs.

Kassidy: Yes. Okay. Well, it's not officially approved by the prison, but I am very optimistic that it'll be, and they love the idea, so we are just getting it up the chain of command to be approved.

Kassidy: However, I am creating a podcast with my students called Yard Dogs.

Kassidy: It will be co-hosted by students who are incarcerated, it'll be fully recorded on the prison yard . I feel [00:18:00] like I have to find a way to start sharing my experiences of going in there. And that's really what this podcast is.

Kassidy: I need to share what I'm learning from these guys and what they're teaching me and they wanna share what I'm teaching them. It doesn't feel like enough to just go online and read their homework.

Kassidy: I want them to be able to tell their stories of transformation and I wanna talk about the hard things and a program like this. And we wanna talk about the good and the bad. We don't wanna shy away from hard conversations.

Kassidy: So I'm super excited for Yard Dogs to be up and running!

Stacie: Well, I can't wait because I'll definitely be tuning in.

Stacie: So the reason I started my podcast, the Human Canine Alliance, had to do with feeling the need to get out into the public these learnings that I had learned in the last year. And I just felt like I was the only one who knew about them.

Stacie: And I was like, how are these numbers real? Like a thousand dogs a day in the US are euthanized. Over 80% of them are trainable. They're super healthy. The only reason they're getting euthanized is because of space and lack of training.

Stacie: And then the other side to that is over 60 million Americans are actually diagnosed, which we know that that just means they made it to the doctor and they got diagnosed for mental health problems. And there's about 1% of those people who actually have, what is considered to be a support animal, who can help them through their daily life.

Stacie: Whereas all of them could actually use some sort of emotional support animal. We could use that as the non-pharmaceutical social prescription.

Stacie: I learned those numbers and I was like, oh my God, what are we doing people? What's happening?

Stacie: And so we are developing an AI powered matchmaking app that looks at human needs, lifestyle, and emotional context, find synchronies, and generates custom training roadmap to support that match. We literally released the first app demo today and I would love your perspective. 

Kassidy: I loved it. You used the example earlier of like the digging and the woman who loves to garden and teaching the dog [00:20:00] to dig the on command. And everything you're saying, I call this the rescue rabbit hole, where it's like once you become aware of it, you can't unsee it.

Kassidy: And it really is jarring. Especially when you realize how much money people are spending on dogs, when you see how many dogs we are breeding just for pets. Like different from like intentional working breeds, but like when we're just breeding them for pets.

Kassidy: And these are of conversations that I was having when I was really deep into rescue where I was like, nursing homes, we should be sending dogs into nursing homes.

Kassidy: I think something like what you are doing is so beautiful because it's solving two problems. Two problems, pairing them together to create a solution to both of those issues. And I think that that is so important and so needed at this time because the shelter problem is only getting worse.

Stacie: There is such a thing as a crisis in mental health the US right now. In, 2023, it was declared a public health crisis, loneliness and social social isolation, which are considered to be mental health problems.

Stacie: If you really think about it, if someone's lonely, like if you give them a companion, a lot of changes can be made for those two beings.

Stacie: And of course it's not as simple as that. But that's where I'm coming in and really trying to introduce term reciprocity from the social prescription side of things, because it's just such a perfect fit.

Stacie: When you train a dog and you teach it to live in your world, but it also is getting to interact in a way that it enjoys. It's getting to use its strength or it's getting to like do the thing. Like it makes it happy.

Stacie: It's such a win-win. It makes no sense to be doing it the way we're doing it. You've got two, two individuals, the person and the dog, lonely, sad, living low quality lifestyles. 

Stacie: We could do better. We could do better.

Kassidy: And I think this comes down like what's so great about what you're trying to create [00:22:00] is this is a networking app too. There's so many people who are out networking these dogs. It's like all over Facebook, all over Instagram, but everything gets lost in this communication versus just having it all in one app would be super helpful.

Kassidy: In the age that we live in, streamlining things is so much easier.

Kassidy: Otherwise you just swipe to the next, and then, you find something that's more convenient, closer. Everything's really convenience heavy, and that's also why people are getting rid of their dogs so much is because life gets busy suddenly, and then their dogs are no longer convenient. But that's a whole other conversation.

Stacie: I interviewed Barb De Groodt who is another trainer earlier this year. One of the clips that came out of that was a conversation about how people look at their dogs like they're something they're bought at Target. And two weeks later it's messing up your house and it's a problem.

Stacie: And Oh, we need to return that 

Kassidy: Mm-hmm. 

Stacie: well, that's a problem, that's inconvenient. And it's like, oh no, that's an actual life like that, that dog committed to you when you brought it home. That dog thought of you as home. 

Kassidy: Yeah. And I think it gets tricky. I was in a shelter yesterday and dogs were $10. uh, to me I'm just like, $10, I'll take these two. But then I'm just like, no, this is a whole dog.

Kassidy: But when you only spend $10 on the dog, can easily see that as like, I just got this from Target, I'm gonna take it back. 

Kassidy: One thing that the shelter does that I went to yesterday that I think is amazing is they give the owners the new adopters a leash, toys, food.

Kassidy: Like they set the dog up as successful as they can. They give the family supplies to take the dog home with they don't just say, here's a dog.

Kassidy: I think creating more options for solutions like you are doing. I think the hardest thing I see is that like we are euthanizing really good dogs. 

Stacie: Let's just say the app exists today. And so we've got the trifecta, we've got, [00:24:00] we've got a human profile, we've got a dog profile, And that third piece, this is where I really felt like it was important in order to be part of the app, is the training.

Stacie: Because if we just leave them alone to come together, even though they have synchrony. He could be a complete nuisance to her by digging up her whole yard.

Stacie: So by matching Rose and Toto, that's just the first step. The key piece to all of it is you can take this training regimen based on Toto strengths, based on Rose's needs.

Stacie: So like with you, it was bringing you home early at night so that you weren't out partying all night.

Stacie: And I'm gonna ask you as a trainer, I just wanna get your feedback on how realistic that sounds.

Kassidy: I think that's pretty realistic.

Kassidy: I think I I, love that idea. I also, I don't know why, what comes to mind right away is having some sort of check-in. Almost like annoying them in a funny way. Have you, have you tried this? Have you done this yet? Is your puppy still driving you crazy? Or is he still digging not on cue? 

Kassidy: And then, I like the idea of giving them three things to work on. Practice this for the next two weeks. Or go find a trainer in your area that can help you practice these three things. 

Stacie: As we close, I'd love to leave our listeners with something grounded and real. What is one thing you hope people take away from this conversation?

Kassidy: I'm gonna kind of borrow what I said in the it's not it's not that serious, especially if you're struggling with yourself and enjoy that you have. Find the moments that you enjoy with them and focus on those over the moments you're struggling.

Stacie: That's perfect. Kassidy, thank you truly for the work you do and for sharing your heart with us today. And to everyone listening, this is exactly the kind of relationship-first thinking that the Human Canine Alliance exists to amplify.

Stacie: If you wanna see what the app demo actually looks like, not just hear me talk about it, you can visit the app demo page on our website.

Stacie: If this episode resonated with you, follow the podcast, share it with someone who needs it, and stay [00:26:00] tuned because this is just the beginning.

Stacie: Thank you so much for listening to the Human Canine Alliance podcast. I am Stacie, your host. I hope you continue to listen and watch.