Enlightened By Dogs: Living with Cooperation, Not Obedience
Dogs behave “badly” all the time…Kathy definitely knows this first-hand.
However, that “badness” doesn’t define our dogs. We live in a society where dogs are considered a set of behaviors rather than complex, sentient beings with emotions and social intelligence.
In this episode of Enlightened by Dogs, Kathy explores the idea of “badness”. She explains how a brilliant partner mindset can help us reframe the way we consider our dog’s behaviors and create a life of compassion, connection and cooperation with our beloved companions.
In this episode:
“When we embrace behaviorism as a dog mom, we end up seeing our dogs as a simple collection of behaviors, needing to be shaped, manipulated to suit our desires. This is instead of us considering our dog as a socially intelligent, emotionally rich sentient being who is in need of full expression, experience and development.”
“There is an under-the-surface assumption of badness when we are in that type of thinking. That our dog is willingly choosing to make life hard for us. Then, there’s a more partnership approach.”
“Underneath their sometimes-bad behavior, they're just good dogs. We are good, perfectly brilliant dog moms underneath our sometimes-bad behavior. That idea is revolutionary. It leads us to have a completely different framework to create a life of compassion, connection, and cooperation with our dogs.”
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