I’m jo. The lowercase j is intentional! ;)

How do I start "about me," when "me" is more than just a dog trainer? I am autistic so I may be overthinking how to answer this seemingly normal, simple title! But nothing is simple when you also have ADHD. When I find something interesting and rewarding, I tend to go all in– just like how training my dog catapulted me into figuring myself out. Because if training a reactive, insecure dog does anything, it breaks you down into the pieces you’d once just safely swept away.

This time, I brought those pieces to the forefront– I had to! If I needed my dog to believe I meant what I said when I told her to go sit over there and not follow the vacuum around, I had to be honest with myself. If I know when I’m not feeling true to myself, my dog would know, too.

And so, being true to myself meant exploring who I was when I wasn’t making my dog my ONE thing. It meant seeking understanding of why certain things felt frighteningly right to me, like identifying myself as gender non-binary. Or why my experiences, both good and bad, of being a first-generation child of immigrants from the Philippines make my love for my family grow exponentially. Or why I naturally gravitate to my artistry to feel ease and conviction, and why gardening helps me regulate and feel closer to the earth.

Being real with myself means acknowledging that I adopted Meadow to fill a void and perhaps to dissociate from all the things in my life that made me unhappy. She fooled me though. Nothing has ever reminded me more than she has, that I am human.

I want you to know all of that because I embody my truth when we work together. And I want the same for you!