Bonehemian Wags

07/29/2024

Happy Monday 🐾🐾

07/17/2024

🐪 humpday 🐫 shenanigans
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05/19/2024

02/15/2024

Happy 💝 Valentine’s 💖 Day 💘 from our pack 🐾 to yours 🩷
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02/14/2024

👁️ 🫶🏽 🫵🏼
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02/05/2024

☔️ Monday Madness ☔️
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01/05/2024

Feeling adventurous today 🐶🧗‍♀️🥾
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12/23/2023

That’s all folks 🎄🦌🐾 (until Tuesday at least;)
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12/23/2023

❤️💚Tis the season 💚❤️
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12/21/2023

The dog training world is awash in trainers and online “experts” espousing the need and benefits of hyper-intellectualizing all aspects of training. Endless unhelpful and unneeded categorization, endless analysis of “emotional state” and behavioral causes which not only can’t be known, but are completely unnecessary, and of course the endlessly unnecessarily complex approaches, protocols, and other assorted nonsense needed to address the endlessly manufactured complexity of the why behind the behavioral issues.

This has created a landslide of frightened, paralyzed, incapacitated owners who instead of following common sense and resolving most issues on their own (which most could if empowered to do so), are completely reliant (disabled) by a training world which doesn’t want them to be empowered—because empowered owners mean status and money focused trainers are largely out of luck.

Are skilled trainers needed? You bet. They can take a 1 or 2 year job of training goals and make them a reality in a handful of weeks or months. They can also create better, more solid, high-level training in general. And, if they’re truly skilled, they can help with those more challenging situations where the average owner would most definitely be in over their heads.

But, this current climate of more, more, more complexity and analysis has nothing to do with helping owners—whether they choose to do it themselves or hire a trainer. It’s a self-indulgent, and self-serving path we’ve been heading down; a path where dogs and owners are the ones left holding the bag because the current culture and societal appetites incentivizes poor priorities.

Instead, if you’d like to become an empowered owner, or if you’re a trainer who’d like to empower your clients, ensure the process of training dogs is only as complex as it absolutely needs to be, and is always as simple as it can be.

The simple blueprint for training/problem solving in this post, and the benefits one can obtain if this blueprint is used, are available to anyone willing to allow the training process to be as simple as it truly is.

12/11/2023

😎😋🐶
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12/08/2023

Wet 💦 and wild 😜 week
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12/08/2023

The young and the wetness 🌧️🌧️ on thirsty Thursday
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12/06/2023

Catching rain 🌧️ drops 💧 with our 👅
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12/06/2023

It must have been Tuesday 👅👅👅
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11/27/2023

I’ve held off writing about this but since I’ve been answering many emails about it every day, here we go. The questions I keep getting (as usual) are

11/01/2023

Tails of Terror 😱
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11/01/2023

🎶 This is Halloween 👻 Halloween 🎃 Halloween 🎶 Halloween 👻

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10/24/2023

BIG beautiful 🙇🏻‍♀️ smiles 👄 on this Monday walk🚶‍♀️
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10/14/2023

A dog 🐕 walks into the bar 🍻 jumps up on the stool 🪑 and says to the bartender, “Hey barkeep, it’s my birthday 🎂 today. How ’bout a free drink?”

The bartender turns, looks at the dog 🐶 and nods his head, “Sure pal, toilet’s 🚽 right down the hall.”
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10/13/2023

☠️☠️ Friday the 1️⃣3️⃣th! Oh my ☠️☠️Just like walking under a ladder 🪜 crossing paths with a black cat 🐈‍⬛ or breaking a mirror 🪞 many people hold fast to the belief that Friday the 13th brings bad luck 🍀 it’s uncertain exactly when this particular tradition began, negative superstitions have swirled🌀 around the number 13 for centuries.
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09/15/2023

Shade break!🌥🌳
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08/13/2023

08/08/2023

🎉 HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎉 Sam! Aka pick of the litter 🏆 aka Sam I am green eggs 🍳 and ham 🐷 aka Samuel Adams 🍻aka Samathon. We are honored to have you in the pack and part of our lives 🤩🤩🤩

08/08/2023

Swipe for a surprise stretch at the end🔜🙆🏻‍♂️
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07/12/2023

ikigai 🎏🎋🍥 in action

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07/12/2023

Hello 👋 summer ☀️ my old friend 👯‍♀️ I’ve come to talk 🗣️with you again 🎵
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07/11/2023

The secret to great style is to feel good in what you wear!💛
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06/21/2023

So many trainers—due to their love of dogs, desire to help, and often personal insecurities—struggle with allowing owners to be personally responsible for their results.

I know many trainers pretend to know this, and will parrot it (“You can’t want success more than your client does.”) as if it’s a deeply integrated truth—but will still engage in unhealthy trainer/client dynamics, and allow the lack of effort/drive/commitment from owners to undermine their confidence and peace of mind…and derail their savior complex.

Here’s the truth. Very, very few people are truly prepared to transform their lifestyles, habits, and become something more healthy and evolved than they currently are…regardless of the endeavor. Just look at personal fitness training, psychotherapy, financial coaching etc.

Trainers, if you want to avoid becoming the bitter, toxic, resentful dog trainer so many of us have seen others become, you *have* to do two things: one, give 100% to the process—that means all in, the very best work, coaching, and encouragement—everything the motivated owner needs to succeed. And two, let go completely of the outcomes—which means you allow your clients to be self-responsible adults who get to make their own decisions about priorities, effort, and the willingness (or not) to be completely honest with themselves.

Owners, it’s your life, your dog, and your responsibility to want the results far more than your trainer wants to help you. If that’s not the dynamic in place, failure is guaranteed. Because the reality is, no one can do your work for you. That’s not what a dog trainer, a personal fitness trainer, or a psychotherapist’s job is. Their job is to provide the tools, coaching, and appropriate motivation, your job is to be so driven, so personally motivated, so unstoppable in your quest for whatever goals you’re pursuing, that you actually take what’s being offered and create the outcomes you desire.

Trainers, stop being dysfunctional enablers. Owners, stop being dysfunctional victims.

When we’re ready to have more honest conversations, which include appropriate boundary setting, proper expectation management, and clarity in regards to responsibility, we can then embark on a healthy collaboration to improve circumstances and create a better reality.

But owners please remember, there’s no one coming to save you—except you. And if someone is trying to save you, the two of you are now entangled in a highly dysfunctional dynamic which will serve neither, and will ultimately undermine both.