The APDT Chronicle of the Dog Summer 2020 | Page 39

Pandemic
Primer
What Dog Trainers need
to know about COVID-19
By Cindy Ludwig, M.A., R.N., KPA-CTP, CPDT-KA
Editor’s Note: Normally the biographical information for the author is at the bottom
of the article. But given Cindy Ludwig’s expertise both in dog training and in the
medical profession, her bio was moved to the beginning of the article so it wouldn’t
be overlooked. Cindy is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer and Karen Pryor Academy
Certified Training Partner and owns a professional dog training business called Canine
Connection LLC. She has been a Registered Nurse (RN) for more than four decades
and is currently employed as the Home Health Clinical Educator for Integrity Home
Care & Hospice, headquartered in Springfield, Missouri. Cindy has a Bachelor of
Science degree with a major in science from the University of Findlay in Ohio, and a
Master of Arts degree in higher and adult education from the University of Missouri-
Columbia. Her clinical experience includes many years as a certified critical care nurse
(CCRN) in some of the nation’s top medical centers, including the world’s largest, the
Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas where she cared for patients with AIDS at the
onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s.
PANDEMIC PREDICTMENT
Never in my more than four decades as a healthcare professional could I imagine a time
in this country when we would be so short of proper personal protective equipment (PPE)
that we would have to make our own. Neither would I have imagined zinc lozenges selling
for $259, a run on toilet paper, or wearing a bandana like a cowboy to comply with
a CDC recommendation to wear “cloth face coverings” for protection against a deadly
virus. But here we are in a new, and hopefully, temporary way of life. “Sheltering-at-home”
is voluntary for some. For others, it is a mandatory restriction imposed by state and local
government. All of a sudden some of us are considered non-essential workers, and others,
essential. Some, myself included, are both if we have more than one occupation.
Essential or non-essential, the novel coronavirus affects us all. Although the pandemic
affects us each differently, for each of us it poses a threat to our financial well-being as
well as our health. Like healthcare professionals who are now having to rely on homemade
masks, dog trainers are having to devise new ways of providing services in what is typically
hands on work.
Photo: Shutterstock
The APDT Chronicle of the Dog | Summer 2020 37