Happy Trails, Waggy Tails

30/03/2024

"I don't want to alarm anyone, but these rabbits are giant" -Tawny

25/03/2024

We had a massive win today with Rosie!

Rosie is very dog reactive, a combination of fear and high prey drive, and today we saw lots of dogs on her walk but she was able to remain calm. Even when there were off leash dogs around!

09/01/2024

I've been replaced. I don't blame him. I'd choose Tawny snuggles over human snuggles any day.

09/01/2024

*sitting on the couch and Lugosi comes over*

Me: "Hi baby cat, what's up?"
Lugosi: "I am at a loss! I was snuggled up in bed with you and Tawny, but you both got up! Why would you leave me like that? How am I supposed to sleep now?*"
Me: "Do you want me to put the blanket on my lap?"
Lugosi: "That would be acceptable.**"

[*It sounded more like a very squeaky "Mree Mooau" but I speak fluent Boogieman]

[**This is what "Muee" translates too]

04/01/2024

I hope everyone has had a happy and safe holiday period!
I'm currently trying to get over a bout of the 'Rona.

I don't make resolutions, because I know that my mental health can't cope with it if I can't achieve them, instead I like to frame my goals a bit differently. What do I want to continue with or take with me from last year into this year? What new skill do I feel like trying? Will this be the year I get my Ursula cosplays finished? (I think the answer to that last one will still be no...)

Do you set yourself any goals or New Year's resolutions? What do you hope to gain from your relationship with your dog this year?

27/11/2023

Me: "I must stop neglecting my social media..."

*several months later*

Me: 😑

Anyway,

I had to walk Tawny up to the shopping centre to get her and Lugosi their "It's Okay" tablets tonight. We passed by a garden that had five highly aroused small dogs barking at her. While we were far enough away, I asked her to check in and rewarded her for doing so. She was starting to vocalise and get a bit excited, letting me know that it was too overwhelming for her to walk past them while they were making such a fuss.

So I carried her past the chaos.

I plopped her back down and gave her some treats and we walked on, business as usual. The other dogs started calming down when they didn't get a reaction.

Now, I'm able to carry Tawny (and she does jump into my arms if we are in those situations where she's overwhelmed and needs a bit of assistance), otherwise I would have waited for enough of a break in the traffic to cross the main road. But the take away is that if I didn't check in with my dog, and made her walk past the barking dogs, she would have been reacting to them and it would have sent them further up the arousal ladder (no doubt resulting in a fight).

20/11/2023

Why do I feel I'm up for a performance review?

31/10/2023

I finally managed to get a couple of good photos of Lugosi and Tawny!

31/10/2023

Happy Halloween from the Goblins at Happy Trails, Waggy Tails! Please stay safe x

17/10/2023

This little chaos gremlin right here has forfeited his free roaming privileges when we go out for yard time. He tried to crawl under the fence into the neighbour's garden, THEN he tried to crawl under the slab which covers the drainage pipes under the house. All within two minutes of going outside.

14/10/2023

Set up and ready to meet everyone at today! Come and say hi to us between 10 and 2 at 20 Owen Street, Glendenning.

10/10/2023

Happy Birthday to my first born son, Bela Lucifer Lugosi (and David Lee Roth)!

20/09/2023

We went to Lake Parramatta this morning before it got stupid hot again. It's a place I always forget about, but it's a lovely dog walk (leashed dogs only).

"Would have been better if you let me chase the bush turkeys..." - Tawny

🐶

19/09/2023

Lest ye thought I forgot, I wish ye all a happy Talk Like A Pirate Day! Raise yer glass! Yarrrrr!

Provided to YouTube by The Orchard EnterprisesP.A.R.T.Y. for Dogs · Alestorm · Christopher BowesSeventh Rum of a Seventh Rum℗ 2022 Na**lm Records Handels Gmb...

15/09/2023

It's Tawny's Gotcha Day today!

I made some special peanut butter and banana pupcakes for her to mark the occasion 🧁

21/08/2023

Tawny and Lugosi are such a gorgeous little pair!

#

11/07/2023

Forgot to post this when I took it the other week. It's a miracle I still have both my arms still attached to my shoulders the way Little Miss Prey Drive was trying to get it!

Also my inner five year old wanted it to come home with us.

09/07/2023

You need to watch all of Lindsay Nikole's videos. She's funny, ridiculously smart, and explains evolution in an easy to understand manner.

The world has so many species of wild cats. Even ones that are tiny. And even tiny ones that have semi-aquatic traits. Today, I'll be introducing you to them...

01/07/2023

The second How To Train Your Dragon movie is very reminiscent of the professional dog training community.

22/06/2023

Today was Lugosi's fifth Gotcha Day!

I'd seen the profile on the local pound website for a couple of months after Milo's passing, and this little cat wouldn't get out of my mind...

So one day I took the carrier up to the pound to meet him and another long timer (who was in quarantine and unable for meet and greets), and he didn't even look at me as he was too busy exploring the meet and greet area! But I'd already made up my mind, he was coming home with me! He turned out to be a really cuddly cat too! So much that we couldn't do the slow introduction to the house because he'd get too distressed when he wasn't able to be with you.

16/06/2023

Finding a dog trainer is a bit like dating, if they claim to be an alpha it's a giant red flag 🚩🚩🚩

Not only has the "alpha hierarchy" been debunked, there's also a little thing they always overlook...

*clears throat*

DOGS ARE NOT WOLVES.

And they haven't been wolves for centuries.

Ever hear a guy say that he’s a ‘total alpha’?

Scientifically speaking, he’s a total do**he.

Today’s Moment of Science… The Myth of Alpha Wolves.

The dynamics of dominance hierarchies vary from species to species. Elder blue-footed b***y siblings dole out the noogies to their little siblings, and chickens have literal pecking orders. Most species have dominant male hierarchies.

However, there are various types of female-based hierarchies in nature, like worker-queen systems for some insect species. Our close evolutionary cousin, the bonobos, are a female dominant society, a likely plot by antifa to destroy masculinity for pride month.

Though we think of dominance as ‘better,’ it comes with drawbacks. The great t**s- uh, the bird species- have ‘high ranking’ animals with a higher metabolism and larger food requirement. Which is easy enough to come by for a human who can drive their ass to 7-Eleven, but wild great t**s need to throw themselves around for their food, even dominant wild great t**s.

Dominant animals in species like bonobos have higher levels of hormones with an immunosuppressant effect. Which makes it sound like a bad idea to fight with an alpha great ape because they’re hopped up on testosterone and they’re here for a good time, not a long time.

So, about ‘alphas.’

In 1947, Rudolph Schenkel published a groundbreaking paper called ‘Expression Studies on Wolves.’ He studied captive wolves in Switzerland’s Zoo Basel to better understand wolf behavior. He observed that packs had a dominant “bitch wolf” and “lead (male) wolf.” They would face off in little wolf thunderdomes with other members of their s*x to protect their status and compare who had the biggest muscles and the best shoes.

To be fair, we knew s**t about wolf behavior at the time. Anything past “wolf says woof” was new information.

The paper could have faded into obscurity, only to be discussed amongst experts in the field as are most scientific papers. Instead, in 1970 biologist L. David Mech wrote a book titled The Wolf: Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species. Mech had also done observational studies of wolves for his PhD and seen what he thought to be the same behavior of competing for dominance.

Extrapolating the study to all species, some humans have been insufferably calling themselves ‘alpha males’ ever since.

However, in 1999, Mech published a new paper.

In ‘Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs,’ a lot of assumptions are revisited. The ‘lead’ male and female? Those turned out to be what scientists call ‘parents.’

In the wild, wolf packs don’t assemble from a bunch of unrelated wolves with special talents coming together to defeat Thanos (but I would subscribe to that newsletter). Wolf packs are just two parent wolves raising their pups until they go off and start packs of their own. The wolf pups don’t fight to be in charge of anything, they often just wrestle with their siblings to play. Or maybe they have one sibling they’re trying to punch in the dick for amusement, I don’t know their life.

Looking back, Schenkel mentioned in his original work that it was “possible” the wolf packs were parents with their pups. But “it might be a family” was nowhere near as interesting as “behold, the alpha and the bitch.”

Mech has been trying to get the original book out of print for years, to no avail.

Until that happens, if you hear a guy proudly declare himself both an ‘alpha male’ and a ‘rational thinker,’ ask when he’s gonna think rationally about giving up on the myth of the alpha male.

This has been your Moment of Science, wishing there were even more birds named after the festive bits of anatomy.

To support my work in making some of the internet's more insufferable citizens sad about utter bulls**t, head to patreon.com/scibabe.

28/05/2023

Picture it, Blacktown May 2023, I'm out with Tawny for our evening walk. We hear the foxes chattering and yipping at the sport's field.
What follows is the actual conversation I had with my dog.

"You can't catch them,"

[I could if I wasn't leashed to you, you're practically an anchor]

"Okay, rude! But you still couldn't catch them. And even if you did, what do you expect to happen?"

[What do you mean? I hunt my prey. Surely, even humans are smart enough to work that out?]

"Tawny, my darling, I love you but you s**t yourself when cats stand up to you... Foxes are bigger than cats and they have the same weapons you do"

[That only happened three times!]

18/04/2023

I can imagine there's a few trainers who would be horrified by me allowing Tawny to choose what direction we walk (where safe to do so), even if there's no reason to go that way...