Advice & Adventures 

My first week trying to figure out how to retrain my reactive dog pack ended up turning into an excavation of my soul and a reflection on where I currently am in life. (Follow me for more light and easy dog training tips!!!!) And, currently, in my life, I am in the middle of a scorched-earth, take no prisoners, I-hate-my-job kind of warpath with the school district I teach in.

Point of View: Your current dog is reactive and it sucks and it's not fun to take them out anywhere and it's exhausting-emotionally and physically. I feel this way all the time. Whenever our first rescue, Porter, was an especially big turd, I would start scouring Petfinder and daydreaming about the very friendly and very social dog I would own Next Time and all of the training that I would do correctly-Next Time. So when COVID hit, we got another dog and then another dog and

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

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