grison-in-space - Tumblr blog

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Probably not a popular take, but I feel like most big negative opinions in dog spaces come from misuse rather than inherent badness of the things. I know dogs who have been hugely helped in their socialization and reactivity by the mindful use of dog parks. I know dogs who get walks and freedom they would never have gotten in their homes without the appropriate use of a prong, training harness, or ecollar. I use a retractable leash for tracking and am currently using it to clean up play skills for mondio at my club's recommendation.

It's not an either or. You can use decompression hikes and controlled walks. You can teach your dog to calmly watch the world and also take them to appropriate dog parks or play groups. You can use an aversive tool gently or a gentle tool as an aversive.

There's nothing wrong with choosing not to use a certain tool, but there are so many broad strokes used that make people afraid to utilize something that might really increase their dog's quality of life or their own efficacy of communication.

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Emotion is fuel, not a product. Your shame or horror or pain or grief does no good to anyone; beyond a certain point, it is worthless. It's only good insofar as it fills you with passion to act--and it's not the only fuel you need to create change, either; you need joy, you need peace, you need rest and humor and love, and you need food and rest and care for your body's needs.

Let me repeat that. Emotion is a kind of fuel. If you are banking emotion beyond your ability to act on your convictions, you are only paralyzing yourself (and probably burning yourself out) to no good end. Once you burn out, it is very hard to return to your former skill and ability level. You do better good for everyone, yourself included, if you pick only a small number of things to work on in the world and trust everyone else to pick different, overlapping things, and you let yourself get really, really good at the things in your wheelhouse.

You gotta let go of the anxiety. You gotta let the grief pass through you. You gotta give yourself rest and pleasure and joy, so you can think and direct your efforts effectively to achieve your goals.

The emotion does nothing on its own.

I keep thinking about that idea of “political hobbyism” where people are informed but not active, and focus on how the news makes them feel rather than what they’re going to do about it.

And the part where Black people are proportionally more engaged with the political process (volunteering, voting) than white people in America but less comprehensively well-informed about the details of the current situation.

And the part where keeping abreast of the situation takes time—a considerable amount—that could also be spent taking action.

To some extent, you do need to choose what you do with your time, and if you’re spending ALL the time you’re willing to devote to politics to becoming informed, you are spending none of your time on accomplishing your objectives.

And if you’re spending time emoting online, you’re neither becoming more informed nor accomplishing objectives.

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"Saw traps for people with moral OCD" is a phrase that has embedded myself into my brain because, well, Saw traps for people with moral OCD are everywhere.

Stuff that basically amounts to...

"You have to listen to my opinions on [issue], or else you don't care about [issue]. (Constantly talks about how people like you are the absolute worst.)"

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me tear you down over things you can't control or you're a bad person."

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me vent to you whenever and however I want or else you're a bad person."

"If you enjoy X media/trope, you just hate Y people."

"Everyone knows that X thing is harmful/hateful; if you engaged in it, it's just because you were fine with perpetuating hate/harm."

"You should have just known better/should know this already!"

This thread over here talks about the inherent issues of putting this kind of stuff out there. The TL;DR is that it really only works on people who are mentally unwell and have poor boundaries, while just pissing off everyone else. It really doesn't matter if you're technically correct; you're still attacking people, and that means they're not wrong to block you.

I think that many of these Saw traps are created when people effectively write posts directed toward people who don't want to help, rather than the ones who do. Like, if you catch yourself writing an angry, shame-laden post, ask yourself: who are you writing it for and what are the odds you're going to change their minds? If your mental image is some smug fuck or angry reactionary, you're writing for the wrong person. Write for the person who's curious, who's willing to learn.

Also? Work on figuring out how to transmute negative feelings into positive, encouraging rhetoric. EG:

"Why is there no X positivity?" -> "Let's hear it for X!"

"No one cares about Y problem!" -> "Hey, we need more recognition of Y problem" or "I haven't seen many people talking about Y problem, so here's some info on what's up."

"If you don't reblog this, you don't care about [group]" -> "Please reblog this, it would mean a lot for us [group]."

And if you're really super duper frustrated and want to vent with a lot of nasty words and sentiments? Consider taking it to a private vent channel or a journal or somewhere that a stranger with moral OCD/scrupulosity isn't likely to run across it.

Remember, most people don't want to hurt anyone. More people are ignorant than malicious. People naturally want to do the right thing, so if you feel like you have to guilt them or shame them into it, there's probably a fundamental communication issue somewhere, or they simply lack the context to understand why what you're saying is so important.

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re: M—'s nun BEING CRISTABEL: HOW DID I NOT CLOCK THIS POSSIBILITY. WHAT THE HELL. I GOTTA GO READ NONA AGAIN. I KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLY DELIBERATE BUT WTF;

OH um! yeah! I had essentially assumed that Jod was censoring out the full names but that M-- was Mercymorn (or whatever her name was before he reset reality and dragged her soul back to his keeping), A-- was Augustine, P-- was Pyrrha, and so forth--all the initials match up very, very, neatly, and so do the dynamics as described (e.g. all pronouns, all lyctor/cavalier combinations, all references to interpersonal dynamics as e.g. with Mercymorn and Augustine). @with-my-murder-flute thoughts?

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I wanna get a bull breed of some kind in the future when I get more experience with dogs in general

how are Staffies with other animals? energy levels? compared to AmStaffs and bullies and bullymutts? she's so pretty

2nd continued anon ask: oh and any really bad health issues in the breed? lines and breeders to avoid? pls info dump about Staffies I wanna know Everything

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Thank you! I think she knows she's pretty, she uses it against people to make them give her food.

It depends on a lot honestly! And to be fair I only have experience with owning Shark (staffordshire bull terrier) who is from show lines. I don't have much intimate experience with how they compare to American Staffordshire terriers or other bull breeds in the home. Most of my experience with those mixes of breeds is at my job as a technician at a veterinary clinic (so not ideal circumstances).

As far as I know, Staffy bulls are a bit less prone to dog aggression than Amstaffs, but I'm sure it's still individualized. Shark is 32 pounds, honestly her portability is a huge plus compared to 60-70 pound bully breeds. It's allowed me to airlift her out of situations easily. Shark is great meeting dogs for hiking sessions, I don't allow nose to nose on-leash greetings, we just start off walking together and casually let the dogs get closer while they aren't focused on each other. But she's also ready to throw down in true terrier fashion if she gets offended, overstimulated, or thinks I'm going on the defensive (she thinks she's my back up).

When it comes to other animals, Shark thinks very young puppies and kittens are adorable (I can post a video of that) but also has gotten swatted by quite a few adult confident cats. I do think if we had more opportunities to meet cats who liked dogs, that Shark would snuggle with them. The cat who lives with us is more nervous and Shark will playfully chase her when she's excited, and has chased a cat outside when it ran, but has also tried to wiggle up to a different more laidback outdoor cat to try to befriend it. Typically she ends up annoying confident cats because she still wants them to play with her and she does that by running around and playbowing at them. But she has also growled at a cat she didn't know at a new house because it kept trying to bat at her tail and she had not adjusted to the new situation and was stressed.

Shark has a good chase drive and loves lure coursing and will chase wild rabbits (she has also called off of them before though thanks to her food drive and our training). She is highly interested in rabbits in cages and in rabbit fur toys, but has not been allowed to interact with one outside of a cage. If there is a frog outside and it moves, she will pounce on it, but if it stops moving she will gently tap it with her paw and if it stays still she will leave it alone. Shark hates horses on the TV but couldn't care less about them when we saw them at RenFaire, aside from watching them. She is highly suspect of pig smells, but we don't have many chances to interact with them anyway. Shark does barnhunt and will search for rats because I ask her to in return for food, but if the rats are not moving/running she again does not care a whole lot about them without motivation.

Energy level wise, she needed 3-4 adventures (hiking or in-store/ downtown exploratory sessions or otherwise) per week until she was about 2 years old, or she would get intense zoomies at night haha. Now that she's older, she can be more of a weekend warrior. She loves snuggles so much that she's pretty content chilling in bed or on the couch with me, unless there is food to be eaten, then she is very talkative about me sharing with her. She can also hike 6 miles, take a 2 hour nap, and then be ready again. She's very adaptable and really down for most adventures (not paddle boarding though, she gets bored being on the board for extended periods of time). She loves a game of tug but really enjoys wrestling and play bitey face or Allowed Destruction Time of cardboard or toys. She is very good in that she doesn't eat nonfood items so I don't have to worry about her ingesting those things.

Because she won't be bred and I would not get into breeding, I don't have the most comprehensive information on those topics. Shark did have base narrow canines when she was young, a very mild case, and her breeder said I could wait to see if they corrected themselves, but I don't play that game and I had a dental specialist vet remove her lower baby canines and create a gingival ramp to help her adult teeth move in more appropriately, and we did ball therapy. I know Staffys generally get tested for eyes, hearts, patellas, hips, etc and they have a genetic cataract disease to test for as well. Temperament testing is a plus, but dogs that go out and do things are even better. I knew some of the other dogs her breeder had placed were doing rally, scentwork, and heard of one acting as a service dog. Most of them were either doing conformation or just being the family dog in a house with children. I do think staffys have a tendency to love children, though of course they should never be left alone to be a true nanny dog with them. During Shark's AKC STAR puppy program she was introduced to lifesize american girl doll type figures and she was so excited and wiggled up to them because she thought they were actual children. Shark has also done a single Day Camp program with me where we presented a very age variable group of children a bunch of veterinary and dog related information. Shark did super well going around and saying hi to each child and performing her tricks for them. They all swarmed her after they came back from a snack once, and she put herself in her crate to decompress and then was ready to rejoin me in our little demonstration a while later and she re-engaged on her own decision. She is so eager to please and will literally do tricks for anyone who asks if they have cookies.

Shark is from Irresistibull Staffords in Monroe, GA. She does have both staffy bulls and amstaffs. Shark was raised with the majority of the Puppy Culture program - I highly recommend choosing a breeder doing some form of puppy enrichment/raising protocols but that's the only one I have experience with and it did create a puppy that slept through vacuums and was very enrichment seeking and made a lot of eye contact to ask for things, she watches airplanes and a few months ago noticed a drone in the sky when we were just hanging out in my car, she's very observant and she thinks a lot it seems like haha.

One of my favorite breeders to watch on facebook is Beret Walsh of Theatric Staffords. I would trust her opinion on breeder related things and recommend reaching out to her!!

I would highly distrust anyone purposefully breeding specifically for dilute (blue) staffords, ESPECIALLY breeding a blue to blue pairing. Staffords commonly have skin/allergy issues, it comes with the type of hair I think, that short little stubby hair coat, and Shark herself gets mild seasonal allergies that I can manage with Miconahex Triz medicated shampoo and sometimes cytopoint injections as needed. But dilute staffords have weakened hair follicles so they become more prone to it, especially if they are from two dilute parents, so there's no good reason to breed for that other than the general public demand/infatuation of blue dogs.

I would recommend talking with a breeder prospect for a while before committing to them so you can get to know them and their views, I feel like people in the breeding world with bull and terrier type breeds can trend towards being stereotypical conservative/republican types and I've heard a couple stafford breeders practically brag about... heavily disciplining (one used the wording.. "beat the shit out of him") their stafford to make it be quiet/behave without any pushback from the other breeders/show people they are talking with. Staffys, despite being a ready-to-throw-down-with-dogs terrier, are ironically so sensitive towards people that they are easy to bully and overpower. Once I was trying to teach Shark how to retrieve to hand and I put too much pressure on her without enough clarity to pick up a toy and she completely disengaged and didn't want to play the game anymore, I waited almost two years before trying again.

I did a lot of preventive training for Shark as a puppy through B.A.T. 2.0 by Grisha Stewart and Control Unleashed Protocols from Leslie McDevitt and Relaxation Mat Protocols by Karen Overall. Anything you can do to set your dog up for success when their reactivity and dog selectivity comes into play as they age will only help you more. Teaching rear end awareness is also honestly so so helpful for a breed that is just GO GO GO and a bowling ball at high speeds when they get excited, I'm sure its saved Shark from injuring herself more times than I know of.

Some bully type friends on here:

@konmari-dogs is Australia based with a bull-arab mix, I learned a lot from their blog about reactivity/sensitive dogs and working with the dog's comfort levels.

@molosseraptor has corsos but is actually who I went to for help in getting a list of breeders to start looking at, that's a service they offered 4 years ago. Shark's breeder was on the list and I realized I had actually met her at my local dog show a couple years before.

@doberbutts is a dobe guy but has a lot of training experience with different dogs and is a big terrier fan haha, just a wonderful resource all around

@albusthefakepitbull we've gone on a hike with them, they have a lot of reactivity training knowledge!

@paws-on-contact has a dual registered american staffordshire terrier/american pitbull terrier Rune, and has had other bully mixes. They haven't been on tumblr lately but I'm friends with them on facebook and love seeing what they get up to.

@notfruits has an american bully and an american staffordshire terrier so would be a great resource to look at the differences between those breeds! Kiwi and Shark had a playdate once when they were younger.

Here are some never before seen (I think) Shark pictures from her 1.5 year old photo shoot.

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That shit makes me so angry as a researcher because so much of it is also just objectively incompetent science. (Well, just about everything the Nazis touched was. It turns out that blood purity and ideological fealty is a terrible way to filter and select your academic corps.) It's both grief-inducing and pointless: so many people suffered and died, and for what? Anyone with some training and ability to construct a coherent experiment could have told the results ahead of time: a whole lot of unnecessary pain and suffering.

And then you get to Unit 731, which... wasn't any less horrific in terms of sheer human misery, but was also significantly more competent in terms of producing usable data. Some of that data is still cited today. I was already in grad school when I found that out, and my stomach turned and I felt sick. It feels worse when you can't brusquely tell yourself that no one who really knows what they're doing could ever—because, well, it's just not true. The scientific atrocities that led to the implementation of the IRB system in North America were quite bad enough without approaching the scale of Unit 731.

Just about none of those fuckers saw justice, either, and so many of them were shielded and sheltered by the US. Awful business.

[jesus fucking crisis king leopold ii in the congo]

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Well that gives me a lot better insight into the upcoming book "Constructing Canine Consent: Conceptualising and adopting a consent-focused relationship with dogs" by Erin Jones.

I was already considering buying it because a) top tier behaviour trainer who keeps up to date on new techniques and approaches really enjoyed a seminar by Erin Jones and is intending to buy the book and b) constantly seeking to better understand choice/control/consent for my dogs in our life.

But this interview removes a lot of the unknown on book content and is definitely going to be something I will want to read.

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I hate you all. I have hated you for millennia…except you, my lord. I merely want to put you in a jail, and fill up the jail with acid once for every time you made a frivolous remark, or ate peanuts in a Cohort Admiralty meeting, or said, ‘What would I know, I’m only God.’ Then, at the end of a thousand years, you would say, ‘Mercy, I have learned not to do any of these things, because I hated the acid you put on me.’ And I would say, ‘That is why I did it, Lord. I did it for you, and for your empire.’ I often think about this.

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I don’t really care about “defining” Murderbot and ART’s relationship I think they’re both uniquely insane human-adjacent but Not Quite sentiences that defy total human comprehension. Murderbot is the only way ART can contextualize human experience. ART is how Murderbot allows itself to be vulnerable because it literally doesn't let it be alone in its brain where it can generate 5 trillion faulty risk assessments per second. ART gaslights Murderbot into thinking it died and then shoots missiles at the colony when it gets kidnapped. They made a kamikaze AI baby together.

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Excuse me, Newfies do not sound like Canadian accent stereotypes to American ears. Minnesotans sound like Canadian accent stereotypes. Newfies sound to Americans like Irishmen on speed.

rb this and tell me what ur accent is. this has no purpose except the fact i just realized i could have like... mutuals with cockney accents or newfoundland accents or something and thats just wild

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Look, the thing about people who do terrible things is that they often just... keep putting themselves in situations that they can use to justify doing those things to themselves. Just a little more. Just a bit more. Well, I had to, there wasn't anything else to do!

I recognize the kind of little weasel John is intimately: he is so insistent about being a Good Man Making Difficult Decisions. It is crucial to John that he be able to justify himself, at least on his surface self or to outsiders, as a Good Man In a Hard Spot.

In a pinch, though... in a pinch, he'll take the easy way out. (My own spoilers below cut.)

He'll kill Mercymorn rather than actually hear her fury out and take responsibility for the death of her cavalier. He'll run from the Beasts rather than pay the price for the things he does; he'll seal Alecto in her tomb rather than actually grapple with the things he did to enrage her so.

In a pinch, if he doesn't want to pay a price, John will dig himself a loophole every time. He'll throw his loyal Hands to feed the personification of his own crimes without qualm, and he'll justify it to himself under layers of his own bullshit.

Which is a longer way of saying that I think you're right on the money. And he detested Cristabel, too. She's kiiiiiiind of the embodiment of everything he finds uncomfortable, and do you know, I don't think he has a single warm thing to say about her? Even his story about killing her frames Cristabel as the person responsible for the whole thing.

Cristabel and the proverbial sandwich

(Spoilers for Harrow and Nona the Ninth)

I have not known inner peace since I saw someone say, "But come on, does anyone ACTUALLY buy John's story about how the nun died?"

Because honestly, I'd just kind of gone, "Super random, very weird interaction, boy there sure are cult mindworms at play here," and moved on to the next page.

But as soon as I saw that question asked, the amount I did not buy that story hit me like a load of bricks, to the point I'm kind of amazed that I ever did believe it.

Two people. A locked door. A nuclear standoff. A close-range head injury.

On one side, a full-fledged Catholic nun—well done, that’s the classic—who's best friends with a staunchly atheist world-class scientist and believes, if we're to believe John, that Jesus's problem is that he didn't stick to office hours.

On the other, a woman described as, "A total delight. Effervescent. Kind to animals and children. A master of the sword. Did not have the intellect you’d ordinarily find in a sandwich or an orange, and was a sickening twerp into the bargain."

Oh, and in the middle, there's also a necromancer who wants to bring back his friends... minus any little details about things he they might have done wrong. He "knows where memory lives in the brain", and they "won't have any of it." And "guys as careful as me don't make mistakes," but then again, all that means is that if he kills someone, he did it on purpose.

C— talks her way into a locked room with John, who's on the phone threatening some world leaders with a nuke, expresses care and concern for him, and then... decides he needs more data on the soul? And kills herself to provide that for him?

I'll be honest, I just don't believe that John was an ordinary guy, totally normal, could be any of us, and he just got put in a really stressful situation and made some bad choices but who HASN'T done things they aren't proud of??? I reject that point of view completely. Like, Elon Musk in any given interaction probably is really stressed out and unhappy and having trouble responding in a way that's at all well-considered or emotionally mature, but that doesn't mean that Musk isn't also, at baseline, a deeply stupid, petty, immature, grandiose, entitled, egocentric person. No matter what situation you put him in, he's going to keep on being those things.

I think that John's initial idea was to put the entire human population of Earth, minus some necessary staff, into some giant cryonic freezers, and give the Earth some amount of time to rest and recover from the effects of human-caused pollution. A plan about which I will confess some hesitation myself; being told "just lie down in this coffin, bro, you'll only be a little dead, I'll totally bring you back to life* in a couple centuries (*98% effective!) " does not fill me with an enthusiasm to hop on board.

And then his project got cut. And he decided, "Well, if they won't agree, I can just make them agree." After all, all that end game needs is 10 billion frozen corpses hanging out in those tin cans, and a small team of staff left to keep the place running. How it gets there is something he can afford to be flexible about. If people won't climb in on their own, he can put them there.

So when C— or the nun tell him to stop focusing on revenge, to bend all his energies to saving the world, I think he thinks: Well, I am. He's gonna wash the earth clean at the end of this! He just needs to be able to set the dominoes in motion. He just needs to engineer a situation that will justify taking his nuke out of the vault and making the pieces fall.

A situation that would be sabotaged, ruined, if anyone made a true deep sincere good-faith effort to talk him out of Plan Nuke and called the legitimacy of this crisis into any sort of question. He needs to prevent that from happening.

Actually. Also. He needs one more thing than that.

He needs an excuse to use the nuke, but also, he's finishing his homework at the very last minute. He still hasn't mastered the soul. He does need a few more test subjects.

Maybe he let her in and thought: Two birds with one stone, eh?

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once I was telling a visiting biologist I very much respected and admired while showing off my colony about the cool manuscript I had just submitted and she told me "oh, yes! I reviewed that! It was very good" and I got to writhe internally with the knowledge that the nicest most thorough Reviewer 2 was one of my science crushes

marine biology is so scary because it’s such a small field. i was giving a talk on cetaceans and afterward a woman approached me with her husband and she said, “you did very well. [husband’s name] actually pioneered the research and published the first paper on that. We were very impressed by you.”

Which is such a scientific interpretation/public education win I will cherish forever but also for the rest of my life any time I give a talk I will be haunted by the knowledge that the world’s leading expert who literally discovered/invented the topic might be in the room,

which is like, the opposite of what you’re supposed to do for stage fright. In fact I never used to experience stage fright but now I will.

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watched some video about a shitty kid yesterday and caught myself thinking "my god the kids these days are out of control" and praise the Lord I immediately reflexively scolded myself like "you were exactly this stupid when you were 13, stupider probably, here's a memory of you doing and saying something so completely terrible because you were a kid and kids don't know better" you cannot let up your vigilance even for a moment, you must constantly fight against age related conservatism and never stop internally interrogating your reactions

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i saw a post on twitter by a european saying americans are fake for their random compliments to strangers and their general cheery demeanor and like no. no no no you don’t understand. if you get a random compliment from an american on the street about your outfit or whatever, that is 100% genuine. we mean it. we aren’t lying we are making a small but fleeting connection with you because our lives are shitty but the human condition is enduring. oh god i’m clutching my chest

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remember when elomusk asked one of his rocketship employees to give him sex favors in exchange for a horse

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These are both fabulous, and McConnell is actually the person I put on my application for the dog training gig as my strongest influence. (I was also profoundly shaped by the writing of Brian and Sarah Kilcommons, which was being published at about the same time.) McConnell is also one of the people I'm eyeing with appreciation and consideration over my academic career; she describes herself as an ethologist by training (most closely related to behavioral ecology) and as someone who mostly does applied animal behavior work in her career.

Mark Derr has been another profound influence on the way I think about dogs, particularly through his book Dog's Best Friend on working dogs, and he's another one who thinks deeply in behavioral terms about dogs in their natural context.

My favorite breed manual is still Daniel Tortora's Right Dog For You, which handles behavioral characterization of dog breeds incredibly thoughtfully. It's 40 years old and showing its age, though; sometimes I think about pitching an update. You can find a lot more about it in my #tortora tag.

You might or might not guess from that list that I like a bright, independent dog of exactly the sort that is often labeled "difficult" to train; I imprinted on Jack Russell Terriers at an unfortunate early age. For my money, the best book for working with dogs like that is When Pigs Fly, Jane Killion. Killion's dogs of choice are not the Border Collies, Belgians, and GSDs you'll see most often kept by professional trainers or the retrievers that are popular for practical jobs; Killion keeps Bull Terriers and does some pretty high level stuff with them. Phenomenal book for motivating and working with absolutely any dog, but especially those from less "biddable" backgrounds.

I'll keep thinking to see if anyone else crops up. I spent almost a decade without the ability to read for pleasure because of other things going on, so many of my favorite books are a decade old. I'll go through my libraries about it in a minute.

Hi! I've just stumbled onto the dogblr side of Tumblr and it seems fascinating. Could you recommend any fundamental reading/watching material for people who want to start learning about dog training/behaviour/cognition? It would also be cool to hear about how you, personally, got into it if you're okay sharing- it seems like a niche field and I'm curious about what the journey might look like for different people. Thanks! ^.^

Oh, sure! Bear in mind that my particular path is, um, actually much weirder than most folks': the dog training with clients is a very new (and very part time) development in my professional life. In my full time job, I'm a postdoctoral associate in neuroscience working on, er, motivation and decision-making in the context of animal behavior. And even for that, my career path has been bizarre: I started out in population genetics, did the PhD in behavioral ecology with a side of metabolic neuroendocrinology, and have now wound up in a NIH-oriented lab focusing on topics related to sex differences, neurodivergence and addiction.

It just occured to me that the dog training thing puts me squarely on the grounds of applied animal behavior research, which means that I've done it! I've poked into all the disciplines that can be described as Animal Behaviour and collected all the achievements! I really gotta reinvest in the Animal Behavior meeting, huh. Oh, wait, no: I'm forgetting behavior genetics, which is an area of strong interest I've poked around the edges of but never myself published in.

See, animal behavior as a formal study contains at least four different disciplines of study that really only loosely interact with one another. Behavioral ecology often appears in concert within ecology and evolution, and it focuses on the study of animals within their own natural context according to their own concerns and experiences. Neuroscience is typically thinking in terms of understanding the mechanism of the human brain, and behaviorism is similarly trained on the universal mechanisms of learning and behavior. Applied animal behavior involves studying how to most effectively, safely, and ethically manage animals in human care, including both domestic animals and captive wild ones; it also covers finding out how to teach animals to do complex but useful behaviors, like training working animals. Neuroendocrinology involves studying how hormones effect changes in the brain and body: metabolic hormones, stress hormones, sex hormones, the works. Behavior genetics (and epigenetics) include studying the effects of genetic variation on behavior itself.

It's certainly not uncommon for people to jump fields once or twice, or to straddle an intersection of approaches over their careers. It's.... less usual to bounce around one's career to quite this extent, which I attribute to the fact that a) I have quite a bit of fairly obvious ADHD, b) I've never worked for anyone who hasn't had their own case bedeviling our focus, and c) I graduated directly into COVID, which meant that I had to figure out a solution on the fly when all the positions I had intended to cultivate dried up overnight.

Not that I'm bitter.

As for how I got into the dog training gig, essentially I like dog training, I really like this outfit, and I have some credit card debt I would really like to pay down. I wanted to meet and talk to more dog folks in the area and I also really missed teaching—I taught every spring and fall through my 8yr PhD, I'm good at it, and I really enjoy it. Since I've respected (almost) every instructor I've had through this outfit, and the one exception involved being listened to immediately about my concerns and increased supervision in response, and I knew that one of my instructors worked part time with them, I figured it might be a neat side gig. So far, that's been bourne out.

I also do have some longer term plans to do some behavioral genetics and neuroscience work on dogs, and I would like to incorporate some noninvasive experiments that use dogs from the general public. My facility also has a robust doggy daycare program and it'd be rad to work with them to build opportunities for everyone in a few years. I'm hoping to leverage a permanent tenure track job at my institution over it, but I might go in several directions from here. Predicting the direction of my career has been a losing proposition so far, so let's see what seems good at the time and stick around as long as I'm having fun.

As for how I got into dogs and dog behavior specifically? In addition to the ADHD, I'm autistic enough to have been diagnosed as a tween girl in the 00s, and my special interests never quite leave —they just flare up and simmer down in long periods over my life. Dogs are the first and earliest of these; my parents told me that they'd seen me gravitating towards the family Lhasa from pretty much the moment I could roll over on my belly. That seems about right. Dogs have been my gateway to huge corridors of my intellectual world, and dog training specifically have been a hobby for some time. In addition to my training gig, I'm experimenting with functional service tasks to support me as burnout and neurodivergence have limited my capacity.

Books and reading recs I'll try to get to later, mm falling asleep right now.