Sarah and the Pack

06/15/2024

Friday night walk with these two…beauty and the beast vibe for sure…

06/07/2024

06/07/2024

Reliable recall-Video #2 : teaching and practicing recall behavior.

05/31/2024

Spring cleaning includes my photos… I’ve got an overwhelming amount of content so here’s a photo dump from the last month or so. Such gorgeous doggos! Diana Estrada

05/25/2024

Want a reliable recall? Here’s where to start!

05/23/2024

starting med trials and gearing up for some medical procedures. I got Ruby a custom muzzle so now she can be safe, comfortable AND stylish at the same time. In this muzzle, she can eat, drink, and fully pant. I’m putting in the time to condition it and our progress is already so exciting… that waggy tail!

05/22/2024

Life for Ruby has been really difficult recently. She has been trying to tell me something is wrong, and while I would literally do anything to help her, I haven’t figured out what that thing(s) is.

In the last week, we are finally making headway, starting med trials and gearing up for some medical procedures. I got Ruby a custom muzzle so now she can be safe, comfortable AND stylish at the same time. In this muzzle, she can eat, drink, and fully pant. I’m putting in the time to condition it and our progress is already so exciting… that waggy tail!

05/22/2024

Well you asked for it…

Here’s my recall training motivational video

LET’S GET READY TO RECAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!

05/21/2024

05/12/2024

To my mama:

Thanks for putting up with endless begging and pleading for a pet dog as a kid and loving all the dogs in my life now, my dogs, day care dogs, boarding dog, and foster dogs.

I cannot begin to explain how much it means to me that you share your home with dogs via Sniffspot (Bayside Field and Farm Private Dog Park
https://www.sniffspot.com/to/04ddu). You are changing the lives of dogs and their people in a HUGE way and the joy I get following your page and reading reviews and seeing photos is indescribable.

05/12/2024

Bowie tried really, REALLY hard to make the water bowl into a pool on Friday and pouted when he couldn’t fit himself in there. Life is tough when you are a teenager.

05/09/2024

05/08/2024

There’s nothing like an adolescent heeler puppy to keep me on my toes! Cuzzie has been boarding here and supervising his interactions with the other dogs has been so much fun. I get so much delight over observing dog body language and, as much as possible, letting them communicate in their primary language, only stepping in to diffuse energy to prevent conflict from escalating. Cuz is testing limits and boundaries, as he should. He has BIG feelings and opinions about a lot of things like what resources are ‘his’ and what he thinks other dogs should be doing or where they should be. Hint: if it involves food, toys, my attention, or comfortable hang out spots, other dogs should be FAR away. I think that letting other dogs communicate with puppies is the best way for them to learn. And I’m glad I have a rotating list of older, more socially saavy helper dogs.

05/04/2024

04/29/2024

04/29/2024

04/25/2024

Like anything in dog training, a solid recall starts with a solid foundation. We need to clearly define what a perfect recall looks like before starting to teach our dog.

04/19/2024

The Friday morning crew. Soooooo close to one photo with all dogs looking At the camera….. mmmhmmm…. LENNY!!! Just kidding…. I’m thrilled he is comfortable enough to be in the mix!

Cynthia Valentine Healey

04/18/2024

I absolutely love watching dog dynamics and doing subtle shaping to reinforce appropriate* behavior and interrupt and/pr support helper dogs to not reinforce inappropriate* behavior. Here is a clip of Olive and Leo’s first interaction of the day, ie a very high arousal time for both of them. For Olive, my goal is less bodyslamming and more consensual interaction with Leo that they both enjoy like chasing. For Leo, my goal is less crotch spelunking and more polite sniffing.

*Here is my ‘into the dog nerd weeds’ caveat: I am not super thrilled with the labels, ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ but can’t think of better words. The thing is that Olive and Leo are demonstrating very biologically appropriate behaviors. Olive is a border collie mix, and humans have bred border collies to be hyper aware of movement and to want to control moving things a.k.a. flocks of sheep. It’s in her DNA. Similarly, Leo is a late adolescent male and sniffing is his jam. But that doesn’t mean we can’t shape these behaviors to help them fit into our human lives and get along better with one another. Knowing that this is super normal stuff helps me understand and be patient and use that knowledge to guide how I work with them.

Also, I’m not using food here as reinforcement although I know both of these guys would accept it. That would be super imposing a contingency, ie bringing food, a contingency, into the picture rather than using the already present contingency of what each of them really wants in this moment as reinforcement. Leo wants to sniff. Olive wants to interact with Leo. I use those things to reinforce them and this way, we don’t all rely on food to get the behavior. Over time more of the great stuff will happen and less of the not great stuff and I will fade out of the picture entirely. Beautiful.

04/15/2024

Spring in slow motion

04/04/2024

Ruby is a recovering chuck-it ball fetch addict and will have 3 months clean this month. Additionally, she has been in ‘hunters anonymous’ for a while now. I’m in the business of replacing behavior, not supressing it, (newsflash: it always comes out somewhere in the end) so here’s our substitute: long range hunk-o-meat tosses.

This allows Ruby to engage in the full predatory motor sequence that is orient, eye-lock, stalk, chase, bite, and consume but in a more thoughtful, less frantic manner that is better for her physically and mentally. This is also great for impulse control and encourages her to use her nose to find the thing meaning oxygen to the brain. Plus, she consumes the food meaning that there is no resource to guard. Look at her loose, waggy body and normal sized pupils! No more cracked out ball addict! And 3-5 of these satiates her in a way that the ball never did.

04/03/2024

Ruby is a recovering chuck-it ball fetch addict and will have 3 months clean this month. Additionally, she has been in ‘hunters anonymous’ for a while now. I’m in the business of replacing behavior, not supressing it, (newsflash: it always comes out somewhere in the end) so here’s our substitute: long range hunk-o-meat tosses. This allows Ruby to engage in the full predatory motor sequence that is orient, eye-lock, stalk, chase, bite, and consume but in a more thoughtful, less frantic manner that is better for her physically and mentally. This is also great for impulse control and encourages her to use her nose to find the thing meaning oxygen to the brain. Plus, she consumes the food meaning that there is no resource to guard. Look at her loose, waggy body and normal sized pupils! No more cracked out ball addict! And 3-5 of these satiates her in a way that the ball never did.

03/20/2024

Selfies with Ru-Beast

03/17/2024

Apparently this is Leo’s version of a lullaby.

03/17/2024

It was a, “when life gives you lemons…” week in Cuzzie training. I showed up to train him on Wednesday and it was like I was training a completely different dog wearing a Cuzzie suit. He was slow, quiet, hesitant, unsure, and just really stressed out… extra sniffing… collar scratches… head lowered… ears pinned at times… yawning… running behind me at times… look aways… I have theories about what was going on for him, but that actually really doesn’t matter. The point was the training plan I had for Cuzzie last week was not going to work with the Cuzzie of this week and trying to force that on him was going to set us up for failure, conflict, and just general negativity and training should never involve those things in my book.

Instead, we worked on a side target (having one whole side of his body, nose to tail, in contact with the ground) and stillness. I love to train this and I get so excited about it especially with a high-drive work-a-holic dog like Cuzzie who is vibrating most of the time. It helps him learn to self-regulate and balances out his natural inclination to move and be busy. I’ve introduced this idea to Cuzzie in previous sessions, but it’s only been a glimpse of stillness… like half a second and when I mark (‘yes’ or ‘good’), he springs out of position.

Cuzzie was BRILLIANT and I was thrilled and so glad that I didn’t try and push my agenda on him. I would have gotten frustrated. He wouldn’t have been successful. His confidence and our relationship would suffer.

So here is a really boring video of a dog being still. This is going to make things like body handling, nail clipping, grooming, ear cleaning, and vet procedures a lot easier. And if stillness is too boring for you, look at it as the foundation for a killer ‘play dead’ trick that I hope is in Cuzzie’s future…

03/11/2024

It takes a pack to train a Cuzzie…
Eric Weiss
Joy Dunbar
Cynthia Valentine Healey
Ayla Ridley
Jean Gipple
Hilary Mankofsky

03/07/2024

What can you do with a food scatter?

Featuring Ruby, Leo, Cuzzie, Olive, Bowie, and Gigi.

03/04/2024

Happy Monday from the pack!

03/03/2024

Just a photo dump from the past few weeks.

03/02/2024

This is what a breakfast training session with Cuzzie looks like! I’ve been working with this guy and his human several times a week for the past month and I’m thoroughly impressed with where we are today. Not bad for a 3ish month old pup! Joy Dunbar