Published inThe Bunny Years·4 days agoTwelve reasons not to get a malamuteLet’s jump right in. Reason #1: Size. Malamutes are large dogs. Bunny weighs almost 40 kilograms, or almost 90 pounds, and that’s fairly typical for males. Some are significantly larger than that. These dogs take up a lot of space. When they are lying in the hallway, you can’t get…Dogs7 min readDogs7 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·May 20The process dogSometimes I think about having a dog that is finished. A dog that I trained a for a while, established routines and rules and boundaries, and beyond that it was just a companion, not a constant challenge. A dog that I can just enjoy without struggle or existential crisis. A…Dogs6 min readDogs6 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·May 5The English E-collar BanOn April 27th this year, a draft legislation was presented to the House of Commons and House of Lords. The document is a Statutory Instrument, the most common form of secondary legislation in the UK, named the ‘Animal Welfare (Electronic Collars) (England) Regulations 2023’. In short, the core aspect of…Dogs8 min readDogs8 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·May 1Dog harness cornucopiaThrough no fault of my own I found myself in possession of approximately a dozen different dog harnesses. Some are for specific types of sports, but most are just for normal life. …Dogs8 min readDogs8 min read
Apr 1Impossible problems, one year laterIn January 2022 I wrote a post about the ten problems with my dog that I thought were impossible to tackle. This was almost two years after he came to me, so, after a considerable period of trying and settling and trying again, something else. Another year later, it’s worth…Dogs5 min readDogs5 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·Mar 18Vorher-Nachher-Bilder*Today I walked with Bunny through the Squirrel Park. It’s just a couple of hundred metres of woodland, along a little burn, with a few paths meandering through the trees. The snowdrops are still out, the birds are getting active. And a bunch of grey squirrels, still easy to spot…Dogs5 min readDogs5 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·Feb 7The birth of a methodIt’s difficult to tell when a method is born. When a few disconnected routines and bits become a set, a coherent procedure. To call something truly a method, it would have to be tested in various circumstances. For a method of dog training, I would need a few more dogs…Alaskan Malamute10 min readAlaskan Malamute10 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·Dec 23, 2022Is this still training?We are in our local park, in the morning. It is mostly empty, we have the whole space for ourselves. What you are watching is basically a very wobbly video of Bunny sniffing around, five minutes of sniffing. At least on the surface this is all there is. The…Dog Training4 min readDog Training4 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·Nov 30, 2022Redlisting dog trainers: Bunny editionI have spent too much time watching dog training videos on Youtube and Facebook. And then I spent too much time testing their ideas on my dog. Therefore, here a quick guide to reject dog trainers out of hand, without further experiments. …Dogs2 min readDogs2 min read
Published inThe Bunny Years·Nov 13, 2022Going rogue: one dog walk at a timeThere is only one good way to walk a dog on a leash: The dog has to stay on the side of the human, at all times, with a loose leash, looking faithfully to the owner, and only when the human gives permission, can the dog go and do anything…Dogs8 min readDogs8 min read