New Year Revolutions 2025
“The meaning of life is just to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.”
Alan Watts.
But, of course, it’s not so simple, at least to most of us. Perhaps especially this time of year when we are to: Lose 20 pounds! Be Better Dog People! Work out! Eat more kale! Learn to Speak Canine Like a Native! Learn Chinese! Learn to Speak Chinese Canine!
Ah, but wait. What if just being alive was enough? What if we use the beginning of a new year not to “better ourselves,” but to commit to simply and truly appreciating what we have? It’s clear that this is something I am working on myself . . . Looking through past year’s “New Year’s” posts, I see a consistent theme evolving: In January of 2024, I wrote about taking DELIGHT in even tiny things. In 2023, I wrote about how do you want to FEEL during the year? I wrote about SAVORING special moments in 2022, and having FEWER To Do lists on my year’s To Do list of 2021.
I’d bet the farm (and I have one to put on the table), that I am not alone in struggling with having just BEING is enough, versus measuring ourselves by a set of accomplishments. That’s one of the reasons that friend and colleague Lynn Ungar’s recent Substack post resonated so deeply when I read it. Here’s a section of what she wrote:
What if you approached the new year not with gritted-teeth resolve, but rather with a sense that you are circling around something that matters, never quite in the same place, maybe a little wobbly in how you go, but connected by an invisible thread that shapes your path? What might change, tiny moment by insignificant decision, if you saw yourself as orbiting around Love or Freedom or Curiosity or Justice or Compassion or Creativity or Joy or Exploration or whatever star might hold you captive?
Lynn Ungar, Not resisters, Transformers.
It’s in this piece that Lynn suggests we consider reVolution for the new year, instead of reSolution, but not in a call to arms kind of way. Rather, in the sense that revolution also means to revolve around something. She asks: What do we want to revolve around in 2025? I love, love this question!
I have pondered this for several days, and have decided I want to revolve around kindness. I want to be someone who sheds kindness like a Pyrenees sheds fur in spring, who sends tufts of it into the breeze like a dandelion. To be surrounded by a air-borne cloak of it like Pigpen in Peanuts. I will say that I think of myself as a generally, mostly kind person, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do better. I have my moments, just ask Jim. And, like many, I have the hardest time being kind to myself. This doesn’t mean I don’t spoil myself with hours on the couch with Maggie and Skip and Jim as therapists, and Netflix as entertainment, not to mention chocolate . . . but still, I am the Queen of Second Guessers, and can be hard on myself for not saying this, or for saying that when it was stupid or unkind or unhelpful or really stupid . . . I know I’m not alone in this, so how about we be as kind to ourselves as we are our best friends?
(Important aside: Kindness does not mean being weak when you need to be strong, or not fighting for what we believe in. We can all be warriors when we need to be, with kindness as our guiding principle.)
Here’s one more thing I’m taking to heart, this year and hopefully in all years to come; the advice of everyone’s favorite advice columnist (yes?), Caroline Hax, paraphrased as: In times of trouble, Zoom in or Zoom out. Meaning, rather than looking at the usual view of life, think like a camera, and focus, perhaps, on something tiny like the color or your favorite sweater, or your first sip of tea or coffee in the morning, or, these Zoomed in close ups of Skip and Maggie.
Or go big, and look at the stars, or at a sunrise, or your dogs barely perceptible in the woods. Here’s a photo of that now.
Oh wait, it’s not, but it’s a chance to be kind to myself. I interrupted this for a bunch of appointments, came back in to finish it, but wanted to take Skip out before dark to work him on the sheep. My intention was to take my camera out and get a shot of (as written above), a dog barely perceptible in the woods. Forgot the camera. Literally had to stop myself from saying “Trisha, you idiot.” A triumph for today!
And, wait, all is well, here’s a similar shot of Skip in the woods from October, Zooming out:
I’ve found this Zoom in/Zoom out advice to be invaluable advice when I feel overwhelmed. You?
We all can guarantee that something is going to happen in 2025 that feels too too hard, or almost too hard to handle. I keep this advice close to me when those things happen. While surrounding myself, and my loved ones, with kindness.
I’m sending that kindness out to you all right now–what a joy you all bring me! There is so much compassion and kindness in our village, I am grateful for it every day.
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: It’s getting dark and the dogs need to eat and something far more important than my little farm happened this weekend. Karen Pyror died on Saturday January 4, and if the earth didn’t stop spinning, it should have. It was Karen who took the science of learning out of the laboratory, and into the real world. First, training dolphins, then revolutionizing the world of dog training, and the branching out to the teaching of all species, including the world’s most difficult, us.
Somewhere, I have a photo of Karen and I together, but that’s something I can find in my own time, when the dust has settled. For now, thank you Wikipedia.
There’s no better tribute to her than what is found on the Karen Pryor Academy site, “Remembering Karen Pyror.” They say, and I agree wholeheartedly,
“Karen’s legacy lives on in every wagging tail, every joyful click, and every moment of connection shared between people and animals.”
Rest in peace, dear friend, the stars are lucky to have you.
If you are so inclined, tell us about the effect she has had on your life. And, if you’re new to all this, read up on her legacy, and how she is responsible for making your life, and the life of the animals you love, so very much better.
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About the Author
Patricia B. McConnell, PhD, CAAB Emeritus is an applied animal behaviorist who has been working with, studying, and writing about dogs for over twenty-five years. She encourages your participation, believing that your voice adds greatly to its value. She enjoys reading every comment, and adds her own responses when she can.
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Patricia is known the world over for her clear and engaging books and DVDs on dog training and canine behavior problems. You can also “meet” Patricia in person on her seminar DVDs, from The Art & Science of Canine Behavior to Treating Dog-Dog Reactivity.
RIP, Karen.
I learned my dogs were my partners, not my inferiors, and a way to train behaviors that gets us both what we want.
I learned a whole new way to think about learning.
And I was able to teach someone with Alzheimer’s a new skill that kept them safe and happy with their consent, a clicker and a bag of M&Ms (and the permission of all the relevant authorities).
It has been a difficult year. Family stuff was hard. The rescue dog has been, well, kinda crazy. A bundle of anxiety and confusion. I totally blamed myself for all the woes. Woulda, shoulda.
Your post has shown me just how much I caused myself pain in my heart.
A sort of shove in a better direction. Words hurt, even when you say them to yourself.
When first I started being a family dog instructor, decades ago, I devoured Karen’s books. Dog eared and stained, I have returned to them over and over. I was trying to reach rural farmers in Vermont, to help change the prevailing attitude most had about their dogs.
Karen, you, Sophia Yin, Pat Miller and many more have shaped and supported my personal journey with dogs.
Thank you for that.
Karen enabled me to possess the golden key to training and through KPA to pass on copies. Of course, positive reinforcement sneaks into the quotidian and, although it has taken six decades, I have finally managed to get some self-respect too.
I never get tired of seeing animals (human and otherwise) have that “aha moment” as they accept the key as of course I did myself, thanks to Karen and all the people whom she trained.
What a legacy.
I love this blog post. Thank you for it.
Rest in peace, Karen. Know that because of you, many of us have happier dogs who have more reliable humans to live with. I know because I am one who learned from you. Thank you too.
Thank you for this meaningful post and for linking the elegy to Karen Pryor. I’m sitting in urgent care while my lovely 14-year-old dog has an ultrasound and other diagnostic work to determine what’s going on. I’m feeling especially vulnerable and so moved by your beautiful and humor-filled self awareness and your boundless love for animals. Thanks for always being so generous.
Your New Year’s posts always resonate with me. A bell that rings for a while. I still remember you asking the question about how we want to feel in 2023. I’m gonna think on this new question–about what we want to revolve around in 2025. I love your image of shedding kindness like dog fur or PigPen’s dust cloak. I think that’s how dogs perceive us–whatever energy we are giving off appears like a cloud of molecules surrounding us, both sticking to us and staying behind in the wake of our trails.
2024 was one of the hardest in the past decade, full of loss and grief over my soul dog’s passing. Learning to live without my sweet Rey, a Peter Pan Pup if there ever was one, has been the lesson of this life’s chapter. A part of me went with her the day her soul left her body, and I’ve been trying to find the ground in earthquake aftershocks ever since.
Oh 2025, what do you hold? Peace, I hope. What will I hold for you? Maybe. just. acceptance. We’ll see what today brings. And the next “today.” and so on.
May your 2025 bring you light and love and many returns on furry flutterings of kindness. Thank you for sharing your bright light with us.
Ah Jen, I am so so sorry about Rey. I do understand the sense of losing part of yourself, so so sorry. May 2025 fill you with Peace and Acceptance (ah, the irony, my other two big words/desires for 2025 for me too). Showering you with kindness; may it move through cyberspace like fairy dust.
Oh my goodness, the world has lost a valuable and wonderful individual.
Karen, yourself and many other amazing trainers and researchers have taught me that leading dogs is similar to being a good human leader. Setting expectations, rewarding what you want to see, and keeping your big voice in your back pocket for when you need it.
Thank you as always for sharing. And thank you for your continued contributions to the world of dogs, and the world at large. Your impact is deep and wide, and I hope you know how much you are valued and appreciated.
Here’s to 2025
Christine, you are so kind, thank you for the kindness you send this way. Here’s to 2025 for you, may it be full of joy and laughter and discovery.
I think the biggest reason we don’t know how to “Just be” is that our culture actively discourages it. YMMV
Right on, Gregg, couldn’t agree more.
In hearing about Karen Pryor’s death on Saturday, I couldn’t help but think of another recently lost icon of the same generation, Jimmy Carter. They both left such powerful, peaceful marks on the world; giving far more than they ever would have asked to get in return.
The Slitherbeast says that this year (And every year) she plans to revolve around Fun.
Also, this is a confession that really the passage you so kindly quote describes orbiting, not revolving, and I ignored science for the resolution/revolution play on words. Sorry/not sorry.
It was obvious early in my life that New Year Resolutions were futile. The idea of Revolutions is inspiring, and I love Lynn’s wisdom (and poetry) in general. Thank you for that. I just subscribed to her Substack.
I grew up learning compulsion based training methods as a child. In 1998 I adopted the first puppy of my adult life. He came with a copy of Don’t Shoot the Dog, which of course transformed my whole life, led me to seek teachers of clicker training and eventually to becoming a professional trainer and behavior consultant. It’s staggering to think of the exponential effect Karen’s work and teaching has had to improve the lives of humans and the creatures we interact with.
I had the privilege of attending a couple of workshops that she taught. She had such a delightful and supportive presence. My favorite memory was of an instance when I offered a friend at an APDT conference an opportunity to handle my dog for one of the workshop exercises. All was going well until someone happened to step between us and cut off Cassie’s view of me, creating distress. Karen immediately recognized the problem and called out, “Where’s the Mommy? We need the Mommy!”
I am revolving around kindness and hope. Hope seems to have taken a real beating win 2024 and I think sharing it will be even more important.
Karen was all about kindness and hope. She brought hope into so many lives – including canine ones. She will continue to bring hope. What a great woman![
My first response to your reVolutionary post was: “If Trisha is refocusing on kindness, holy #$%@, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me,” (for you are one of the kindest people I know). Then I stopped and saw the truth to what you were saying and the knee-jerk reaction I was having and sat back and said, “Oh, right.” I am revolving around your truth and should not see it as a comparison to my own but as a whisp of a conversation adding to the layers of a much bigger picture.
Revolution: late Middle English: from Old French, or from late Latin revolutio(n- ), from revolvere ‘roll back’
Revolve: late Middle English (in the senses ‘turn (the eyes) back’, ‘restore’, ‘consider’): from Latin revolvere, from re- ‘back’ (also expressing intensive force) + volvere ‘roll’.
Restore, consider, roll back with consideration. I like it.
Meta (as in involving change not the social media platform) is my motto for this coming year. The past two years of multiple close-to-my-heart losses of life have moved me through grief, sorrow, despair, anger, confusion, and deep quiet–rinse and repeat. I am now able to take a more reflective look at how I deliberately move through metamorphosis and decide what I keep, what I will eventually know on a deeper level, and what becomes part of my muscle memory.
RIP Karen Pryor. The depth of her impact on the animal world is ginormous. The realization that animals are sentient beings should not have been as revolutionary as it was, but it truly was/is a life-changer. We have spent the last five months with Karen’s Relaxation Protocol. We first practiced it with Olive and now Daisy. It’s a great way to work together on focus and patience in differing contexts for all of us.
Oh dear, I hadn’t heard. What a gift she was to us! I’ve given away more copies of “Reaching the Animal Mind” than I can count…
I probably watched a thousand hours of video seminars while I was studying to become a PDT. The thing that drew me to you and your books, more than any other factor, was how KIND you were. Some other good trainers seemed uncomfortable, condescending or impatient with the seminar attendees. Their affinity for animals obvious, their desire/ability to connect with humans less so.
So, while we could always do better is true. Trust that you do pretty dang good!
So much here, as always, where do I begin? I adore the perspective on the new year–I have so much trepidation and worry about…things, and yet we continue on, in our own little spheres, hoping to make a difference. The rescue dogs keep coming and I keep plugging along there. I am better about boundaries than I used to be, and am grateful for that. I know for every one I place (figuratively fighting tooth and nail to find that perfect spot for each) two more will pop up and I can’t stop it. So, no more falling on my sword for rescue, for that serves no one. I do what I can, helping as many as I can get to a better spot, and keep those boundaries as strong as I can for me and mine.
I am forever grateful to Karen Pryor, although I must admit I am only peripherally familiar with her work. I have Don’t Shoot the Dog but have never read it completely, and of course clicker training has been part of my knowledge base for a couple of decades. It took me some time to realize that I just wasn’t adept at getting it right, timing-wise, with the clicker, so I use voice and I have evolved the voice to praisepraisepraise – lots of noticing, lots of talking and encouragement, and PRAISE (for both the dog and myself, really – because it’s a thrill every time, isn’t it?) And my canine relationships have blossomed beyond my wildest dreams. I was able to unlearn the “tool use” training methods I was taught many years ago, but it’s an uphill battle in my breeds (Rottweilers and Llewelin setters) to try and help people get away from inflicting pain with these aversives. Karen’s seminal work remains the bedrock for the discussion that you don’t need them, and I return to it again and again. With our dogs especially, I’ve learned that establishing the relationship means that they are all too eager to partner up (“finally, she SEES me!”) and I don’t need a pocketful of treats on my person 24/7 for them to respond to me. We were so lucky to have had her – and to have YOU!, and so many others (Suzane Clothier, Jean Donaldson, Pat Miller, and more) – you are the vanguards of a kinder world for all.
This email gets flagged as unread- best to keep your message fresh and revisit often. So appreciate your heartfelt wisdom. Time is precious.
Wag more. Worry less.
Karon Prior changed my life. She helped me to heal a family wound. Her book “Don’t Shoot the Dog” transformed my life.
At a Clicker Expo years ago, I turned around during a seminar and Karen was sitting right behind me! My face lit up and I asked her to sign my original copy of, “Don’t Shoot The Dog!”, which I happened to have with me. She looked at its tattered, yellowed pages and dog-eared corners and told me, “You know there’s a revised edition.” I nodded and replied, “This is my cherished copy, my Bible.” She smiled in acknowledgement and signed it graciously ❤️🙏🏻. She is my Guru and changed the world of dog training forever!
Thank you for this, Patricia. I’ve saved this post so I can re-read it often. It seems to me that you’ve set out a great way to live. I so appreciate you, your humor, your wisdom and compassion.
Hello, Trisha! Thank you for the news on Karen Pryor – pioneer that she was, I doubt I would have known of her passing any other way. I am a very amateur dog trainer, though, who ran across your work just before hers, almost 20 years ago, and was so grateful for the insight into the canine mind. I recently adopted my second reactive Australian Shepherd, eyes wide open this time, and am realizing he’s more of a challenge than my last – so I’m doubly grateful once again for the experts whose work is so available in today’s world.
Here in Portland, Oregon we have a new-ish organization with expert behaviorists and a couple of veterinarians to turn to for help with reactive dogs, and I will be starting to work with my new little man (he’s a mini-Aussie) with a deep bench for advice and support. But I wouldn’t even know to go looking if not for you – I attended the in-person talk you gave in Oregon around 2008, I think in Corvallis? And the talks you gave at Powells in Portland. To this day I still send people looking for your “For the Love of a Dog” as a fascinating and gentle beginning to realizing the intensity of their focus on us as we do all the things we do that we have no idea they watch and react to. So, I just want to say thank you, again, for all you have brought to those of us who fall hard for the sweet and sadly confused little beings that go on to enrich so many of our lives so deeply. I hope you can let the light that Karen turned on for so many continue to exude from you for many years to come. Many blessings to you!
Thank you P. Anne! So good of you to take the time, much appreciated.
She was a hero!!
She wasn’t a king or a president. She wasn’t the leader of a country. She wasn’t a man.
She was a brilliant woman who believed in kindness and changed the world.
Rest in peace.
Oh, Trisha, I feel as you do that the constant battle to improve and
excel is sometimes so hard to resist. “Perfect is the enemy of good (Voltaire, I think).” See I’m succeeding a bit by not looking that up! I do find that aging helps (I can no longer be a lot of things I want to), and also that after the shock of the last year, kindness has become a driving force for me. I want to understand, I want to help, I want to make a difference and maybe it’s okay that that is on a small scale. If we all do that, what a difference we can make!
Karen Pryor has taught me so much through books, trainers, etc. My dogs and I are happier, braver, and more successful due to her and many she has influenced. I want you to know the same is true of you. I recommend you to everyone open to thought about their new puppy or dog.
Thank you. Thank you . For sharing your kind & wise words. I appreciate the message from Lynn Unger & will ponder the concept of reVolution. Sad to lose Karen Pryor whom I greatly admired.
Karen Pryor is the reason I clicker trained an entire classroom of elementary students. I was teaching in an alternative school. Mornings were traditional age mates classes and afternoons students could choose from a variety of classes in mixed age classrooms. I called the class “Dig those Dogs” and taught beginning behaviorism. I had wonderfully behaved classes even when some of the more behaviorally challenged students were included. Clicker training is an incredibly powerful tool. And she should be forever blessed for bringing it to a wider audience.
I don’t usually specific resolutions just intentions like remembering to bring my reusable shopping bags with me into the store. This year though I have resolved not to add to the chaos and not to amplify the voices of chaos. The media and pundits are filled with examples and speculations of chaos and the collapse of order. So many people are reacting to this but I’m deliberately choosing not to react to speculation and to refrain from my own speculation. I keep hearing the Kipling poem “If” in my head. “If you can keep your head while about you are losing theirs…” That’s my goal this year, to keep my head.