Peaceful Pack Dog Training

01/05/2025

Dogs trainers, friends and families are mourning the death of the gifted Karen Pryor. Her work bettered the lives of so many by bringing a gentleness and kindness to our work with animals. Her groundbreaking and accessible book “Don’t Shoot the Dog” changed the way we thought about training dogs and was one of the reasons I enrolled in Gail Fisher’s (another brilliant trainer) All Dogs Academy so I could help teach others this way of training dogs. Karen’s legacy shall live on each time a dog is not choked, hit or zapped with electricity and instead is rewarded for learning how to think and choose the behavior we desire when training. Dogs live more joyfully with their humans thanks to Karen Pryor, thank you Karen .❤️

Karen Pryor’s life work defies labels. As a marine mammal trainer in the 1960s, she was a pioneer in the use of behavioral science to develop the dolphin shows at Sea Life Park. While there, she wa…

12/10/2024

09/03/2024

This is wonderful, for both the dog and the tiny human!

05/17/2024

It’s okay to just HAVE a dog.

Many people show their dogs, compete with their dogs, train their dogs for all kinds of things; and that’s wonderful- but you don’t have to do that to love or have a dog.

You can have a dog that you sneak a piece of your sandwich to, that you take on hikes or quiet walks, teach to grab the leash and bring to you, and let sit on your lap and make your eyes water with their horrific gas each night as you watch TV together. You can have a dog you do nothing with but enjoy, bring comfort to and receive from, and feel a sense of home with.

You can have a dog who doesn’t know anything fancy, but never leaves your side. A dog who doesn’t have any ribbons but can dig the best holes in your yard. You can just have a dog. That’s okay. Your dog doesn’t care. I don’t care. I feel the same with horses.

Today’s world often seems to put so much expectation on not just the dog, but the human beside them. Dogs don’t care about how many ribbons YOU’VE ever won, or whether you compete in things, what degrees you have, they don’t care. They are just happy to have a human who understands them, loves them; and provides for them. They are happy to just have you, and you can be happy to just have them too.

If we could normalize just having dogs, not expecting so much of them, and ourselves, I think their worlds would be much better for it. We’d lift some of the pressures we’ve put on them and ourselves. The things we see people doing with dogs today is amazing, but it doesn’t mean what you are doing is any less. As long as your dog is happy, enriched and understood, that’s all that matters. Really.

Here are my dogs, just do***ng.

04/27/2024

Sometimes when it comes to having a dog on the end of a lead. We even forget how to read basic human body language.

I’ve often been followed across the road , into a driveway, across the park. I suppose it’s very hard to understand why you would avoid interaction when you’ve never had a dog that doesn’t seek it.

But the main rule is if somebody looks like they’d re trying to gain distance from you. Allow it.

10/07/2023

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD – If your pet care professional isn't talking about; Choice, Communication, Compassion, Consent, Emotions, Empathy, Partnership, Respect, and Trust; you NEED a NEW pet care professional. Before training a dog, you must have a relationship based on compassion, empathy, and respect. To achieve that, you must be able to understand your dog's needs, emotions, and how they communicate. Having the ability to make choices and to give consent is essential to the mental health of every living thing. We can develop a lifelong partnership with our dog only after we understand all these things.

07/25/2023

Everyone deserves to have their space honored.

When I shared this photo just over a year ago, it caused a lot of stir on the internet.
People were mad. I was called names, I was accused of mistreating my dog, and I was told repeatedly that if my dog couldn’t handle being greeted by another, he had no business leaving my home.

I know this topic can be a sensitive one, so I was ready for some difference in opinions.

What I didn’t prepare for was the entitlement. The blatant selfishness. The loathing directed at me because my dog has different boundaries than someone else’s.

I feel that this topic is an incredibly important one to talk about. These dogs, the ones who need some extra space deserve to have someone to speak up on their behalf.
So I will continue to be that voice.

Head on over to the blog to read more about this topic and reasons why a dog might need space (www.sit-pretty.ca/blog - link in bio!)

06/02/2023

The idea of dogs as “pack animals” is a long standing myth that is unfortunately still with us now.

Groups of dogs, usually in small numbers or just pairs, form loose associations with one another, there is no “alpha”, and there are not clear dominant-subordinate hierarchies an d structures between them.

This makes sense, since dogs are primarily scavengers and scavenging can be done individually. They rarely hunt for sustenance and it’s even more rare that they do so in groups.

It’s important to understand this because this myth of dogs being pack animals often leads to harmful actions towards dogs, especially if we also assume we as humans are somehow part of our dogs’ “pack” when they know we’re not dogs. These harmful actions include:

- Making dogs go on stressful and unnatural large group “pack walks” where dogs are wearing aversive equipment and have no way of moving away.

- Making dogs “heel” or walk behind us and obey us while not being able to engage in any natural behaviours to put them in a so-called “pack drive” or a “follower state” which just isn’t a thing.

- Thinking we need to exert “dominance” or be the “alpha” by using punishment and aversive corrections.

- Labels like “alpha” and “dominant” leads us to think that certain natural behaviours our dogs do is an act of “defiance” or trying to be the “alpha”, and this results in the use of aversive methods and intimidation to “put them in their place”.

There was never a power struggle between us and dogs when dogs first became dogs and there also isn’t a power struggle between dogs. We don’t have to project the unfortunate hierarchical structures between humans onto dogs.

Instead of holding onto the idea that dogs are “pack animals” and thinking of ourselves as part of their “pack”, we can look at our relationship with dogs as one that is collaborative, built on friendship and care, and with no hierarchy.

Like with any of our close loved ones, we can love our dogs for who they are, learn from each other, help them to be happy and have their needs met, and help them be safe and feel safe! This makes us all free and empowered in this amazing relationship between fellow sentient beings.

Resources:
- Boitani, L., & Ciucci, P. (1995). Comparative social ecology of feral dogs and wolves. Ethology Ecology & Evolution, 7(1), 49–72. doi:10.1080/08927014.1995.9522969
- Marshall-Pescini, S., Cafazzo, S., Virányi, Z., & Range, F. (2017). Integrating social ecology in explanations of wolf–dog behavioral differences. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 16, 80–86. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.05.002
- Larson, G., & Burger, J. (2013). A population genetics view of animal domestication. Trends in Genetics, 29(4), 197–205. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2013.01.003

ID: The background image shows two dogs, a white dog with pointy ears and a black dog with floppy ears, lying down on the ground next to each other. The text says “Dogs are not pack animals and ‘pack drive’ is not a thing.”

04/01/2023

So nice to have Devina Iyer in the MDI/Ellsworth area!

Cooperative Dogs dog training company by Devina Iyer

01/22/2023

https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/France-bans-training-dog-collars-that-cause-harm-to-animal?fbclid=IwAR32OC6cF4iMtPkAGBawAKtDrhgMvu2l9lwyo9zKUEFkS4zcFa6uaxjJBqE

MPs voted to outlaw collars with spikes, electricity or which tighten without a means of restricting this

01/12/2023

Indeed 🐾

It’s Not Training

It is most certainly planned learning.
What is the difference?
Us.
Our view, our mindset is the biggest hurdle to our own learning let alone that of our dogs.
Many of us can easily view the learning that is ahead of an eight week old pup. They will “need” to learn the difference between indoors and outdoors: places to p*e and get bonus rewards and places that don’t. It’s not house training, it’s certainly not house breaking, it is a build of the pup’s ability to memorise places of rewards and develop geographical awareness of their small world. This is a skill.

Read more ...
https://www.learningaboutdogs.com/its-not-training/

01/10/2023

Such a great post- please allow your dog to safely explore their world