Here’s to the Disruptors.

Before I say any of this, let me preface it with this:

If you’re unwilling to actually read, reflect, think critically, sit in nuance, or consider perspectives outside of internet soundbites, cult-like thinking, and emotional reactions… then this post probably isn’t for you.

And that’s okay.

You’re more than welcome to keep scrolling or unfollow.

The conversations I have here are not surface-level conversations. Never have been. Never will be.

This also isn’t for those with the attention span of a gnat.

My pieces are long. Intentionally and appropriately so.

Filled with lessons, education, awareness, provocation, perspective shifts, and lightbulb moments for those willing to slow down enough to truly take them in.

This community isn’t for the faint of heart. And neither is this approach to dog | human training.

Why? Because it requires Honesty. Radical honesty.

And most people are perfectly content living in projection, avoidance, blame, numbing, suppression, emotional reactivity, denial, resistance, deflection, and comfortable narratives that never require them to honestly look at what *they* are bringing to the table.

It’s easier to blame the dog.

But dogs don’t let us get away with that for long. Not if we’re actually paying attention.

Dogs challenge what we think we know.

Every single one who trots into our lives.
Every single one we work with.
Every single one we welcome into our homes, families, and packs.

They challenge our ego, emotions, blind spots, inconsistencies, projections, expectations, nervous systems, patience, leadership, and self-awareness.

They reflect back Truth.

What’s in excess.
What’s lacking.
What’s missing completely.
What’s dysregulated.
What’s misunderstood.
And also… what’s right.

That’s a big part of why I respect them — and this work — so deeply.

Last night, I was sharing old photos and videos of Winnie as a puppy (…just no words), Willie and Rocco — who were blessed enough to find wonderful families, stability, love, and consistency, and who still keep in touch. If you’ve ever fostered, then you understand how fulfilling and heartwarming that is. Grateful is an understatement.

I was also looking through old photos of Ava and the puppies from the very beginning of this journey… back when they were tiny enough to fit in the palm of my hand. Before their eyes and ears opened. Before they discovered their feet.

Tiny little lives born to a mother who’d been dumped — pregnant — in the California desert and forced to survive under impossible circumstances.

…only to then encounter the incredibly broken systems that so often fail dogs while simultaneously claiming to be their champions and saviors — exposing human blind spots, emotional decision-making, ego, projection, and major gaps in understanding along the way.

And to be clear, this isn't dismissive of those in rescue doing hard work — and what most people simply won’t inconvenience themselves to do — every single day.

There are *many* deeply caring, honest, ethical people trying to help dogs with the knowledge, tools, emotional capacity, and understanding they currently have.

But I do believe rescue, as a whole, tends to do far better with the easy “marshmallow” dogs than the dogs who bring far more complexity to the table… which is actually the great majority of dogs — much like humans.

The....

traumatized dogs,
highly driven dogs,
environmentally sensitive dogs,
dogs with frayed nervous systems,
dogs with genetic predispositions,
dogs carrying survival patterns,
dogs who require structure, clarity, boundaries, decompression, neutrality, leadership, and genuine behavioral understanding...

THESE are the dogs who expose the gaps — and call forward the truth that **love alone is not enough.**

And Ava, as well as her babies, are exactly those types of dogs.

The saddest part of this is, unfortunately, most of them paid the price for that in some way, shape, or form.

Many well-intentioned, bleeding-heart dog lovers end up failing the dog in front of them precisely because they lack deeper understanding of dog psychology, behavior, drives, nervous systems, environmental influence, regulation, relationship dynamics, and who dogs actually are in nature.

Intentions matter. But understanding and skill matters, too.

As I was sifting through those pictures, I just sat there thinking:
God… what a journey this has been. Honestly, you couldn’t write the things we encountered over the last year and a half.

We encountered just about every possible tragedy, blind spot, limitation, challenge, hardship, lesson, and reality check throughout this entire rescue effort.

*The Long Way Home* — the new book detailing this journey — is proving very difficult to write emotionally... and it’s going to take time.

The rescue effort with Ava and her babies has, hands down, been one of THE most difficult things I’ve ever undertaken. And I’ve long been a doer of difficult things.

I don’t think people fully understand how much dogs can change you when you truly walk *with* them through the hard parts instead of trying to control, suppress, rush, label, medicate, or emotionally project onto them.

Ava especially.

This dog has challenged me, humbled me, exhausted me, expanded me, broken my heart open, and taught me more about the current state of rescue, the level of fluency of many of the people behind it, the operations that fail the dogs in their care, nervous systems, behavior, healing, trust, regulation, structure, relationship, trauma, resilience, and honestly… the current state of the world… than I can fully articulate.

She’s even reminded me of who I once was and is challenging me to step back into my boots again. I’ll forever be indebted to her for that.

Watching her now compared to where she started feels surreal sometimes.

Which brings me to e-collars.

To continue our upward trajectory, I decided to introduce her to the e-collar.

And I’m incredibly glad I did (for reference, I'm a professional dog trainer who specializes in *behavior*).

It set the stage for an enormous leap forward in clarity, communication, accountability, partnership, and freedom.

For those with limited understanding: no — an e-collar is not a “shock collar.”

Yes, actual shock collars are awful devices that operate on high electrical stimulus with basically three settings: hot, hotter, and hottest. And yes, those should be wiped off the face of the earth.

But a properly used modern e-collar? Completely different.

It functions far more similarly to a TENS unit or muscle stimulator (which I've even used as such a few times). The levels are adjustable with enormous nuance and precision — often to the point where humans can’t even feel the working levels many dogs respond to.

A dog’s state of mind is constantly shifting based on environment, perception, nervous system state, and drive.

They're constantly upshifting, downshifting, and changing gears in response to the world around them — again, much like humans.

The problem with e collars isn't the tool itself.... but human ignorance, emotional dysregulation, inconsistency, poor timing, lack of education, lack of accountability, mixed signals, unclear intentions, and simple misuse.

People want quick fixes.
Done-for-them solutions.
Effortless results.

They want cheap, fast, convenient, comfortable, and easy.

It's THIS mindset that's the real danger.

And, sadly, this reflects the great majority of the population... and, once again, dogs are often the ones who pay the price for it.

Relationship.
Communication.
Trust.
Regulation.
Accountability.
True understanding.

The REAL stuff underlying true, honest, and effective “dog training”… doesn’t work that way.

It’s not about forcing, pushing, or rushing the process.

It’s about clarity.

And the ONLY problem with these tools is that they’re widely accessible to anyone and everyone — including people who have absolutely no business touching them.

Anyone can hop onto Amazon, Chewy, or any other website, buy a training collar or tool, and immediately start winging it.

And many do.

Unfortunately, it often backfires and ends up eroding trust, relationship, creating confusion, increasing stress, and undermining the very foundation that actually needs to exist first.

THOSE are the people who give these tools a bad reputation.

Not the thoughtful, educated, emotionally regulated humans using them with clarity, fairness, communication, timing, accountability, and relationship at the center of the work.

There MUST be education with ANY dog training tool.

That includes the crate, leash, clicker, slip lead, prong collar, e-collar… any of it. All of it.

I’ve seen trainers misuse even the most “basic” tools like the leash, food, and a clicker.

Because, again: it’s never just the tool.

It’s the human, the intention, the timing, the emotional state, the consistency, and the energy behind the tool.

An e-collar is not something you just slap on a dog and start pushing buttons with.

A language has to be created first.

People often use tools to fill the gap where relationship is nonexistent.

And that’s the other problem.

I always move through three phases in teaching anything I’m using with a dog:

I. Association Development.
II. Conditioning.
III. Proofing.

Tools like this are simply tutors. They're accentuators. Punctuators. Accountability partners. Communication clarifiers.

Because most humans are constantly sending mixed signals and messages through their energy, vocal inflection, tone, inconsistencies, lack of follow-through, body language, spatial navigation, emotional state, and so on.

Dogs are constantly reading *all* of that information — whether people realize it or not.

And every dog — like every child — learns differently.

The key is understanding the dog in front of you. Their:

drives,
temperament,
nervous system,
perceptions,
learning style,
environmental sensitivity,
thresholds,
confidence,
clarity,
and communication needs.

Reality is nuanced.
Behavior is nuanced.
Humans are nuanced.
Communication is nuanced.

And so are dogs.

Some dogs are soft, highly sensitive, or environmentally overwhelmed.

Some completely shut down under pressure.

Some need less information.

Some need more information.

Some need more clarity.

Some are genetically hard.

Some are powerful and driven.

Some are constantly scanning, bracing, anticipating, and preparing to “take on” the world… like Ava.

Ava is incredibly environmentally aware, high drive, deeply perceptive, physically powerful, naturally assertive, and has a nervous system that spent a very long time learning — then believing — that the world was unsafe.

Always scanning.
Always preparing.
Always braced.

The e-collar has been one of the most humane, fair, clear, effective, and emotionally neutral communication tools I’ve used with her.

And she’s come a LONG way with it.

Clarity.
Communication.
Consistency.
Accountability.
Follow-through.
Safety.
Partnership.
Freedom.

It allows me to communicate with precision... without emotion influencing it.

And that matters enormously for certain dogs. Especially dogs like her.

People who demonize these tools often have never actually lived or worked with truly serious, high-drive, high-capacity dogs in the behavioral realm and in real-world settings.

Dogs who can absolutely hurt themselves, other animals, or place themselves in dangerous situations if the human is too soft, too permissive, emotionally reactive, or if communication is unclear, inconsistent, delayed, or absent altogether.

My gentle giant, Levi, was my greatest teacher with this.

Most people could never grasp how such a loving, sweet, emotionally connected dog could also have one of THE most intense prey drives I’d ever personally worked with.

But he did.

And he taught me SO much about clarity, communication, fairness, accountability, neutrality, timing, and the different drives- how to best build, satisfy, and speak to them.

Now… Ava is wearing his collar. There's, admittedly, something deeply emotional about this.

Levi was a great teacher, and now Ava's teaching me, too.

In many ways, she’s picking the torch up from where he left off.

Ava’s been through the wringer in her short life.

And I don’t know what percentage of her behavior is actually Nature versus what's been shaped by trauma, stress, instability, survival, environment, and nervous system rewiring… but it doesn’t even matter.

What matters is the dog standing in front of me now.

So every single day, we work.

We chip away.
We redefine the meaning she assigned to the outside world.
We teach safety.
We teach neutrality.
We teach regulation.
We teach decompression.
We teach clarity.
We teach trust.
We teach follow-through.
We teach partnership.
We teach her nervous system that the world is not constantly asking her to survive.

I’ve been reteaching her that she doesn’t need to stay braced against the world at all times.

That I’ve got her.

...but I’ve also had to up my game enough to become believable in that, too.

And this is what Ava’s done for me.

This has been her gift.

She’s pulled me back into parts of myself I thought I'd lost.

For those who are new to our story, I lost everything I’d spent many hard years building because of COVID.

My 15 yr old very healthy, very successful dog training and behavior business in DC.
My home of 12 years.
My way of life.

My health took a massive hit.
My confidence took a massive hit.

There was an extraordinary amount of loss in an incredibly short period of time.

And, as if that wasn't enough, I lost each beloved member of my OC ("Original Crew"). Levi. Raiyna. Chip. The Todd-father.

My left and right training hands.
My teachers.
My confidants.
My best of friends.
My family.

I stopped training almost entirely after coming to California.

Working with Ava has required me to remember that part of myself again.

To step back into my footing.
To trust myself again.
To dust off my training hat.
Slide back into my training boots.
To show up with clarity and steadiness in exactly the way she needs me to.

That’s the thing about dogs — the really special ones. The ones who come bearing the greatest gifts…

They don’t just learn from us. They teach us, too.

And they disrupt.

They challenge.
And they shake us awake.

Though, sadly, most people will never experience the depth of relationship truly possible with a dog because they never slow down enough to genuinely understand the animal in front of them.

When expectations, projections, ego, fantasy, or emotion become more important than reality… the dog always pays the price.

Always.

Dogs deserve to be understood — not simply controlled, labeled, rushed, emotionally projected onto, or forced into one-size-fits-all approaches.

The “disruptors” are often the real treasures.

My Lobo was a disruptor. He was the reason I was thrusted into dog training and behavioral work to begin with.

And Ava is absolutely a disruptor… in the very best of ways.

It’s the disruptors who are most often failed, misunderstood, behaviorally suppressed, bounced around, or euthanized early because their needs, intensity, lessons, and requirements exceeded human fluency, understanding, emotional capacity, and/or leadership.

We desperately need more behavioral literacy — especially among those working in shelters, rescue, fostering, adoption, raising, and yes… even training.

We need more nervous system literacy.
More individualized care.
More relationship-centered approaches.
More nuance.
More responsibility.
More education.

That’s the future I want to help build.

If you want to learn more about the dog in front of you — and the person in the mirror — check out my latest book:

*The Human End of the Leash: Dog Training’s Missing Link.*

Four years in the writing. Over twenty years in the experiencing, learning, living, rebuilding, grieving, observing, failing, growing, and understanding.

And check out the masterclasses and courses in Dog Mom University: https://dogmomuniversity.thinkific.com

Because dog training was never just about dogs. And it never will be.

The moment we truly understand that… is the moment everything changes.

Here’s to the disruptors… and the humans willing to learn.

(Pictured here is one of my most treasured pieces by Brianna Wiest. Feels incredibly appropriate that Ava was standing there taking it in, too. It reads....

"Your new life is going to cost you your old one.

It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense
of direction.

It’s going to cost you relationships and friends.

It’s going to cost you being liked and understood.

It doesn’t matter.

The people who are meant for you are going to meet you
on the other side. You’re going to build a new comfort
zone around the things that actually move you forward.

Instead of being liked, you’re going to be loved.

Instead of being understood, you’re going to be seen.

All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you
no longer are.”

― Brianna Wiest)