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

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.

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.

This post is about our trip to Pocahontas State Park with our 4 dogs.

This blog post is about the Delaware State Park campgrounds that we have visited with our reactive dogs.

This blog post is about Porter's reactivity training.

Porter nips one pair of pants too many, so we hire a trainer.

We get Porter home and realize he's a psycho.