My Dogs and Me

When I’m training, I’m always thinking about why Kiera does or doesn’t do what she does. I’m always trying to see if I can understand it from where she is and go from there. For example, once upon a time, I wasn’t having any luck getting Kiera to remain calm when people came over to our house. Whenever someone would arrive, Kiera would go into overdrive to make sure everyone in the house was safe for posterity. I’d tried the … Read More

One morning, as I watched Kiera and Graidy zooming around the backyard together, it struck me how much of Kiera’s play was really herding behavior. Graidy would float around the yard like a piece of newspaper blowing in the wind– fluttering this way and that, skipping and hopping, twisting and twirling. Kiera would conserve her energy as long as Graidy stayed within a certain range. She’d stay in a semi-crouch position with neck stretched out and down, watching. Once he’d … Read More