Joyful-Dog Play Personified
I'm reading a book called Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, by Ingrid Fetell Lee. If you need a lift (who doesn't now?), get yourself a copy of this book immediately. I bought it awhile ago, feeling somewhat abashed that I'd been convinced by slick marketing to spend money on a superficial "feel good" book with little substance.Oh, how happy I am to have been wrong. Joyful is a wonderful combination of stories, experiences and science that truly does have the power to make our lives better, without massive investments in time, energy or money. The author has spent a considerable amount of time figuring out what actually, truly makes people Read More
A Voice
I just can’t write much today. I’m both gutted and enraged by what’s going on nationally related to sexual assault and trauma. I cycle between stunned immobility and anger-fueled empowerment. I've struggled about what to write--nothing? Repeat a post? But the feeling that I had to say something wouldn't go away. And then I realized I’ve already said something. As a matter of fact, I wrote a whole book about it. Here's part of it:From The Education of Will, Healing a Dog, Facing My Fears, Reclaiming My Life:I wasn’t crazy about my job at the nonprofit, but I did enjoy organizing our annual conference. During my last year there, I was also responsible for presenting a talk on the Read More
More Ways to Confuse Your Dog
In my relentless pursuit of making mistakes myself so that you can avoid them, here are two recent examples of ways I've attempted to confuse my dogs.The first example relates to Willie charging through the door when we said "Willie, wait". He is usually very responsive to the cue "wait", and I couldn't figure out why he was barreling out of the house when we asked him to wait at the door. Both Jim and I began getting all primate-like and frustrated when Willie flew through our legs (or into them) after we asked him to stay still.Fortunately, I took a breath and thought it through, and realized it was me that was causing the problem. (Can you hear me sigh?) Years ago, when I had Read More