A Dog’s Eye View

11/06/2024

Happy birthday .13 I hope it’s full of (gentle) egghead-butts and mild loving dragon breath!!!

🎉🎂🥳

10/25/2024

10/17/2024

I am having surgery on 10/24/2024 and will be in recovery for 4 to 6 weeks, I apologize for any inconvenience. Connect with me via email [email protected] and I can consult with you remotely by phone or video call, or match you with another qualified trainer or behavior consultant!

I will miss you and your pups terribly! Happy training and look for progress no matter how small ❤️🐾

10/01/2024

I had the pleasure of escorting Rufus to his peoples’ wedding over the weekend, what a beautiful day! This is a service I occasionally offer to my clients, and I always enjoy. What a good boy Rufus is🐾♥️

09/29/2024

🐾LARRY🐾

I need to get back to client appreciation posts! Larry, like so many pups from rescue, came to his people with a plethora of typical pitty health issues; itchy uncomfortable skin, allergies, dietary concerns, but boy did he hit the jackpot with his veterinary nurse momma! He was also quite fearful, head shy, handling sensitive, uncertain of new people, and not trustworthy with other dogs, not to mention he was a powerhouse puller!

There are still some hurdles to overcome, but he’s come so far, give this cutie and his people some love🩵

09/23/2024

Some adorable photos and updates of recent client’s dogs. I will never not enjoy adorable dog photos and positive updates!

Post yours in the comments if you feel so inclined and enjoy Winston from his groomer, Stella with her first scent title ribbon, and Jasper and Skylar enjoying retirement road trip adventures with their people!

09/03/2024

I’ve been back and forth about posting this, but I think it’s important for people to see the downs as well as the ups, to know you are not alone.

A couple weeks ago I flew home for a weekend to see my folks, Cheese flew with me as my psychiatric service dog, as he has done very successfully many times. Our trip there started out beautifully, as you see in this photo, but it quickly fell apart. Cheese perked up and barked as we took off! I worked on managing and getting him settled and he barked again! In other contexts I would just move and take space and then return or not, since this is something in his adolescence that has emerged we’ve been working on it. The bark is shrill, singular, and incredibly startling, will stop with time, but had never occurred in this context before. Cheese is there in part to help mitigate my panic attacks, anxiety, and self-harm, but I found myself in a situation where his behavior was exacerbating it to an extreme. He was restless vocal and couldn’t settle.

Cheese did not settle the entire flight, not after my emergency/landing lickimat, not with our normal co-regulation exercises, not patterns, not his chew, not snuffling in his blanket, not being held…I had to work with him the whole 4 hours through my hyperventilating, dry heaving, and shaking. He may have barked a total of only 4 or 5 times the whole time, but that was with constant diligence on my part despite my panic and preemptive anxiety about Mondays flight home!

I share this as a reminder to myself and others that no matter what level or type of training you are doing with your dog, you are partnering with a sentient being who will have good days and bad days, on days and off days, you are not programming a robot. Old me would have wasted my whole weekend training and prepping for Mondays flight, but both Cheese and I needed to complete the stress cycle and start fresh for our flight on Monday. We hiked, walked, played, and enjoyed the company of family and friends. I upped my meds and though some might see it as a cop out medicated Cheese for the flight home, we both finally got some rest.

06/22/2024

Proud to announce I am now a Licensed Family Dog Mediator, thrilled to continue to support my clients and their dogs in the most holistic and practical ways possible. This is a network of collaboration, understanding, and support for both ends of the leash. Thank you to my fellow LFDMs and Kim Brophey!
in.motion

06/22/2024

Proud to announce I am now a Licensed Family Dog Mediator, thrilled to continue to support my clients and their dogs in the most holistic and practical ways possible. This is a network of collaboration, understanding, and support for both ends of the leash. Thank you to my fellow LFDMs and Kim Brophey!

04/09/2024

Heading back home after a very fulfilling time in Oregon for ClickerExpo and in Colorado with family. More to come from ClickerExpo. Cheese🧀 has just been the best boy.

04/05/2024

Day 1 ClickerExpo 2024, Cheese 🧀resting through Susan Friedman’s first presentation and playing in the room with his new toy.

.friedman

02/14/2024

There are so many ups and downs working with challenging dogs and their dedicated humans, this was a perfectly timed Valentine’s Day ❤️up(date)!

“Hi Emma!

I hope you're well and having a great start to the New Year! I realized we started training with Dasher just about a year ago and wanted to share an update on him. He's made so much progress since starting his reactivity training -- his reactions have gone down significantly, to the point where we can pass small dogs on walks with limited to no reaction (still working on his confidence around big dogs but he's doing great!). Once we started on Reconcile, I saw a huge improvement in his ability to absorb the training and his general anxiety overall.

He absolutely adores my parents' chihuahua which was one of our big goals of having a good introduction and relationship with. He is so sweet, kind, and gentle with every dog I have introduced to him and I have loved learning about dog behavior in the process to make sure I'm understanding his body language and feelings.

He's such a great dog and I wanted to thank you SO much for all of your help with our training last spring. Here's a short video of his first year with me and I've also attached a few pics:

Dasher's 1 Year journey

Thanks again for everything! 🙂

Best,
Chloe”

* I will attempt to include the tiktok video in the comments 😉

02/13/2024

Prepare for you and your dog for the new addition…

02/10/2024

Thank you for this Laura!

Don't underestimate how physical needs, chronic pain, and other subtle medical issues can affect behavior. 🐾

If you've ever had a headache or back pain and no one around you knew about it or asked you about it, you've experienced the feeling of pain that flies under the radar of others. 🤷‍♀️

Dogs are incredibly stoic. Evolutionarily, it wouldn't be safe for them to show external signs of pain. Modern-day domestic dogs are no exception to this rule.

You know your dog best. If something feels off, it likely is. So when your dog is extra noise sensitive, needs extra space, extra guard-y, extra EXTRA - consider that it very much could be MEDICAL first. Talk to your Vet and then keep talking to them. 💕

Laura Gendron
CPDT-KA, LFDM, FFCP

01/29/2024

Only dogs can decide whether a crate is their safe space. Dogs don't automatically love crates. And they don't automatically feel safe in them.

Us calling a crate a dog's safe space does not make it so.

But if you do want to try out using the crate for your anxious dog to snuggle in, take the door off. That way, he gets to decide when to go in and when to come in.

His anxiety. His choice.

01/13/2024

Surviving your dog's adolescence is something we don't often talk about in a way that brings the clarity and nuance the topic deserves. Scroll any dog-centric FB group from the basic to the geeky and find cries of help relating to reactive behaviors (I can't walk my dog, she goes crazy when she sees another dog!), seeming stubbornness (why won't my dog come inside from the yard?), and fear-driven concerns (my dog always did fine at the vet but this week he really freaked out). Dig deeper and you will see how often the age of the dog in question is somewhere between six months and three years, with the majority falling in that year to two year range. Our perfect puppies grow into teenage tyrants just as sure as anything, but what should we do? Will they grow out of everything? What if they don't? What should we dig in and work on, and what should we avoid while allowing the passage of time?

The exhausting answer is it depends. So know this:

Your dog will outgrow her impulsivity but not her learning history. In the case of overreactions, those will get smaller, but what your dog is learning when she has one will not go away without targeted work. When it comes to seeming defiance, that too is about learning history; the one that has been written up to this point. If your dog isn't listening when you thought you had taught her well I have bad news; you didn't teach her as well as you thought. That ugly rearing head of fear or anxiety? One question is important: can I avoid what scares my dog (at least at fear-provoking levels) during her adolescence (we are talking up to and sometimes past three years of age) or will she have to endure it? If you can avoid it that whole time, do. Expose at non-provoking levels if possible, but avoid that fear response like your life depends on it. If you can't? You need help, and this is when I rope in the veterinary team, their Rx pad is going to serve your dog in ways your training will not be able to.

Now is the time to be clever about your reinforcement, anticipatory in your management, and insisting in your requests. Make unwanted responses hard to access and desired responses fruitful. Protect them from themselves without hindering their experiences. They are learning how to be in the world, they are learning what they are capable of, and they are learning they might need backup at times--be sure that backup is you.

Oh, and one more thing: enjoy them. They will be grey-faced and slow moving in the blink of an eye, and you will yearn for their younger terrible selves. Trust me.