PawsitiveWalks I Dog Walker South East London

20/03/2025

March 20th is National Westie Day, marked by the passing of the 16th Laird of the MacCullum-Malcom, who passed away on March 20, 1930, at 92 years old, but was fortunate to have witnessed the development of his breed into not only a working dog, but a show dog and popular pet worldwide!
The History:
Colonel Malcolm, who passed away on March 20, 1930, at 92 years old, was instrumental in shaping the Westie into the popular breed we know today.
The Legend:
He is said to have decided to breed only for white dogs after one of his reddish-brown terriers was mistakenly shot as a fox during a hunt.
The Westie:
The West Highland White Terrier is a small, sturdy dog with a double coat and a lively, affectionate personality.
Westies as Service Dogs:
Despite their small stature, Westies are intelligent and trainable, making them well-suited for various service roles.
Yuki 💓

05/11/2024

06/10/2024

Clare Palmer

Save up to £40 today

04/10/2024

Please sign this important petition 🙏🏻 this man must be stopped!

437 signatures are still needed! Deny Entry to the UK for Ivan Balabanov due to Animal Cruelty Practices

10/07/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/fttaud6L2rpUFi3G/

03/06/2024

Spot on Dr Conor Brady 👏🏻

23/05/2024

Love this! Thank you for sharing your thoughts 🙏🏻

My thoughts on the “dog training war”👇

Despite being a fairly outspoken force free trainer whose content has certainly triggered the compulsion crowd in the past, I’ve been quiet this with the newest so-called “dog trainer war”.

Why?
1. I’m pregnant and don’t need added stress. I suspect my thoughts will somehow upset both sides, and I can’t say I’m looking forward to reading the comments.😂
2. I’ve been trying to sort out my feelings about it this time, because it hasn’t felt as black & white to me as usual.

However, I’ve gotten many DM’s asking my opinion about the saga between Zak George, Denise Fenzi, and more. So, I’ll share my thoughts….

I want to start by saying I unequivocally feel aversive methods such as prong, shock, or choke collars have NO place in modern dog training. I’ve made my stance on that clear repeatedly in the past, and it has not changed.

There’s extensive research showing the harmful fallout that can occur. Zak has a great list of studies on his YouTube video as a place to start for anyone wanting to look into it.

For those unfamiliar with my account and perhaps finding me for the first time, I do not work with so-called “easy” dogs.

90% of my private training business is reactivity and aggression work. Ive never once needed aversive methods to get results, and I’ve slowly been showing some of that work on my YouTube channel. In the upcoming year I’ll be showing many videos working with highly reactive and aggressive dogs.

So, why do I have mixed feelings about the saga this week if I’m so adamantly pro force-free?? That’s what I needed time to ponder and figure out.

I think my answer is this: While I 100% believe professional dog trainers (which I’ll define as anyone that takes money in exchange for training advice) have a duty to use modern, up-to-date methods, I also often tend to focus on the dog GUARDIAN side. Why???

My focus is not on trying to change the mind of or regulate compulsion trainers; I want to help change dog GUARDIANS minds. If the public no longer tolerates or pursues hiring compulsion training, then compulsion trainers go away and this all becomes a moot point. Changing the public’s perception is where the true power lies.

As I’ve previously spoken about, I was raised in a pro-compulsion household by a mom who was a dog trainer. For awhile, I genuinely believed that corrections were NECESSARY to “fix bad dog behaviour”.

In my 20’s, I realized that was 💩.

I have never, ever charged a penny for anything EXCEPT force free advice since my stance luckily changed before becoming a dog trainer myself.

But, I can also be a heavily stubborn human 😉 If I, as a dog guardian, had seen these ongoing “battles” before doing my own research and internal searching, I personally would’ve been turned off force free training. I don’t like being told what to do; I never have. If I heard my way of thinking was problematic or wrong, I think I would’ve turned away. No one likes hearing that their beliefs or thoughts are “bad”, ESPECIALLY if they’re not being shown viable other options.

(I want to be clear that if you actually listen to Zak, he implores dog TRAINERS to hold themselves to a higher standard and does not come down on dog GUARDIANS for methods chosen. But I do also understand some of the criticism when people say it’s too much and can feel like it becomes judgmental).

There was a silly study I read long ago that measured the effectiveness at a pool when trying to get kids to walk safely on the wet pool deck. Saying “walk please” was WAY more effective than saying “don’t run”. For whatever reason, that has stuck in my brain all these years.

Our minds have a hard time processing “Don’t” unless we can visualize a substitute. For people already well-versed in force free training, hearing “don’t use a prong collar” makes sense to us…. We know other methods and ways of changing behaviours such as leash pulling or reactivity.

But what about those people currently using the compulsion method? If being told “don’t” they *genuinely* may not know another option for training. If we (IE force free) don’t seem approachable for asking questions because we appear too preachy, will that person consider switching? Or will they just shut off?

I feel it’s important to state the research and why aversive training is unnecessary and harmful. However, I think it’s even MORE important to show how ELSE to effectively train without resorting to aversives.

I won’t pretend that I don’t have strong beliefs. I want dogs treated kindly; that’s evident in my content. However, the reason 98%ish of my content simply shows me working with untrained dogs with force free methods is for the “please walk” concept of effectiveness. Showing viable, easy-to-follow examples is (I believe) much more effective for changing things than saying “don’t do that”.

When I was younger, I didn’t believe force free would work. If I can SHOW it working now, I feel like that’s much more likely to change the mindsets of people that still think the way I personally used to.

At the end of the day, I don’t want force free to be seen as an “alternative” to compulsion training. I want it to become THE way dogs are trained, because there really isn’t a need for anything else.

26/04/2024

No…not exactly.

21/04/2024

COPIED BECAUSE IT’S TOO BRILLIANT NOT TO SHARE!

The other day I was at the local public park (not a dog park, but dogs are allowed there). We were walking along in a high movement area so I had my dog on a leash. Another dog, off leash, sees us and starts approaching.
My dog needs her space so we start moving away, but the dog got to us before we could leave. My dog was stressing a little so I politely said to the woman, sorry my dog doesn't want to play and ushered her dog away.
Her dog gets the message and moves on.
Quite good, right? Here comes the juicy part:
As I’m leaving the owner comes to me with a speech more or less like this:
Hey, if your dog is nervous and doesn’t even want to play with other dogs, go somewhere else! Don’t come to the park and ruin other dogs fun.
I heard this and a wave of fury started taking over, but suddenly I think I had a lightbulb moment and switched gears completely.
With the biggest, friendliest smile, I opened my arms as wide as I could and said Ohhhhh! Come here... I want to give you a BIG hug!
With panic in her eyes, she backs up, speechless and quickly starts walking away.
I said "Hey, don’t run, I’m so friendly, come on, I only want to give you a hug! I’m friendly I promise... I just want to Hug You!"
Still speechless and backing away with terror now, I said "Wait, You don’t want my friendly hug?"
She yelled No!
I said "Well neither does my dog! Have a nice day.!!!"
As I walked away, I saw her just standing there, speechless and she was leashing her dog! 😅
I think I’ll try this approach more often 🤣

20/04/2024

The average American family washes about eighty pounds of laundry A WEEK, and if you're using conventional products, the toxins from your laundry spill into the water🌊 and move into the air, both in and outside the home.😿

If you use dryer sheets, fabric softeners or even those popular fabric deodorizing sprays on your pet's bed and blankets, the "fresh scent" they leave on your laundry is actually a result of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone.😳 VOCs can cause skin irritation, respiratory issues, and organ damage. Researchers have identified 25 different VOCs emitted from dryer vents when these products are used.💨

But fear not! You can create non-toxic laundry options that are safe for you, your pets and the environment.🐶🐱🏡 Join us today for a live demonstration in the The Forever Dog Learning Lab at 5pm ET, where we'll show you how to make your own pet-safe laundry detergent, dryer sheets and fabric deodorizer. Say goodbye to harmful chemicals and hello to a healthier home for you and your beloveds.🙌 foreverdoglife.com

03/03/2024

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10169282721380311&id=615940310

20/02/2024

What a fantastic Live with Rachel Fusaro and Grisha Stewart Academy and Empowered Animals, LLC 🙌🏻
Please watch and share 🙏🏻
Thanks so much Rachel for all you are doing in the canine world 🫶🏻

► Dog Food List: https://www.rachelfusaro.com/dogbetter► Pet Products I Trust: https://www.rachelfusaro.com/► FREE Grisha's BAT Book (Code: FUSARO): https://...

29/01/2024

Check out this litany of lies from Purina collated by Susan from Truth About Pet Food. It's unbelievable.

Just for background, for anyone missing the alerts this side of the pond, there is a LOT of reports of yet another mass sickening of pets by dry pet food in the US. Rapid onset sickness, bloody diarrhoea, likely some deaths. Multiple brands are suspected which suggests a dietary ingredient higher up the chain, likely chemical, considering the speed of onset.

The culprits, IMO, are either some nasty chemical inclusion such as excess vitamin D, an issue they keep having of late, for some reason, or perhaps something more sinister like the melamine scandal that has been rearing its head again of late. That or mycotoxins from mouldy grain, which in a way, is a nasty chemical by-product, albeit from nature. too. One of those two.

Legends such as Judy Morgan and Saving Pets One Pet @ A Time are working very hard to accumulate affected client messages, something you'd wish a regulatory body someplace would be doing for us. They are also reporting the brands involved.

Now, on that last bit, we are in a grey area. Before the DCM scandal, you could look back to the 2006 melamine scandal when tens of thousands of pets were being laid out, and the FDA stubbornly refused to name the brands at fault (they had to be forced by Congress). Wouldn't be fair to impact those poor companies' sales and reputations.

Fast forward to 2016 when the FDA could not WAIT to name the handful of natural, grain-free producing companies, they SUSPECTED (never proved and were later strongly suspected of bullsh*tting about) were causing 600 cases of Dilated Cardio Myopathy (DCM) in pets. This is without testing (or at least sharing the results of their tests) a single product from these companies. No recalls ensued. No issues were reported with these products in the EU. It was enormously damaging to said companies. Remember, this was 600 cases in suspected 0.5-1mil cases a year in the US alone. It was a complete fabrication, a ruse by the FDA / Big Pet Dood to slow the growth of natural pet food sales in the US. And it worked.

The above have taken great personal risk to stick their heads above the parapet like this. As they are simply collecting independent reports of pet sickness and are telling us all what they say, they are well covered.

Still, these companies are very cash rich so suing, particularly in the US, is very much a tool they use to slow down a scandal. That it hasn't happened yet is very telling. The bad products are out there. They will be tested (which Morgan is footing the bill to do some...). The results will speak for themselves.

At any rate, the odious little veterinary white coats (vets paid to support the brand online, we all know they are), came on Insta, doing their videos highlighting how good Purina actually is, as they are paid to do (one actually admits home cooking for her dog) and sending their mean little minions to the above pages to put laughing emojis on all posts and messaging hatred to those involved in calling it out.

Then there is the rebuke below by Purina, one of the main companies SUSPECTED to be involved in this latest scandal. With a long history of accidentally poisoning pets and bullsh*tting about it afterwards, they are shrugging this one off too - it's a complete fabrication, apparently. The above are lying, misinformation, simply trying to sell products, etc.

Well, we'll see about that, won't we Purina?

Until then, Susan has put together a fabulous summary of Purina's position when it comes to saying "all is fine" when in the background it was extremely clear it was not fine at all. Check out the sheer lengths this company will go to cover its tracks and keep pushing its terrible junk down the neck of your pet.

The time between misinformation and fact today is no more than a few weeks. Watch this space.

29/01/2024

CGMP/Animal Food/Adulterated