Spots & Brindle

Dogs Outdoors Wellness

Welcome

This website is for those of you that love dogs, being outside, and learning how to sculpt your life to fit you. I am in the process of learning how to train my reactive dogs and get outside with them and I am also in the process of developing the skills I need to make some changes in my life. I have found that a lot of what I am learning about in my personal life overlaps with the work I am doing with my dogs. I explore those intersections and write about them here, along with any of our successful outdoor wanderings. Join us for recommended dog-friendly treks, wellness tips (human and dog), training tips (just dogs), and more!

Advice & Adventures

When You (or Your Dog) Are About to Emotionally Detonate, Here's What to Do

What to do at this point in your emotional elevation is best summed up by this scene from Season 3 of Parks and Rec: When Chris brings a vegetable loaf instead of cake to a surprise wedding, Ron gets increasingly wound up. Before he's about to pop the top off his muffin, Leslie tells him to take a walk. There's a moment where Ron blinks and you can see the internal conflict playing out: "I WANT TO BE MAD AT THIS GUY because he's ridiculous!!!! But also.... he's super nice and

ericamargaret5

Fail Stupendously... And Then Call For Help

I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to re-train my adult dogs even though were, well, adults. My job is to teach reading to high school students, so I have this annoying belief that anyone can learn at any age and this applies to my dogs, as well. I can learn to train. They can learn to...keep learning. I wanted to take a real stab at training them to be great out in the world--not just kind of manageable if I keep them on short leashes. As you know from my original post

ericamargaret5

Early-Early Signs That You & Your Dog Are Going to Lose Your Shit

Part of thwarting reactivity in humans and dogs is to look for the early warning signs that you (or they) are getting riled up.The idea is that it is way easier to shut down reactivity at the very early stages, when there's just low level concern, rather than later once that concern has swelled in to a frothing furor. If you put a few items on your credit card and then pay off that small amount-no big deal. If you put A LOT of big, unaffordable purchases on your credit card,

ericamargaret5

How I Managed to Sabotage Every Goal I Set In The Previous Week

The Reactive Human (me) was supposed to be working on not being big mad at her bosses, and instead immediately crashed out on an assistant superintendent who took away over 50% of the adult only bathrooms in our school and didn't see what the problem was., AND Reactive Human was NOT EVEN SORRY that she had been reactive.

ericamargaret5

You Need Threshold Training & So Does Your Dog

So here we are. Me and my crazy dogs trying to get our shit together. Trainer Miriam Pollard says that when dogs are unsure what to do in a situation, their genetics take over. When I am unsure of what to do in a situation, I turn to books.

ericamargaret5