Keep Calm Dog Training

Your puppy's best gym buddy? Self-directed play!

credit: SubThreshold Training with Julie Naismith

Training collars may seem like a safe and easy-to-use tool, but there are good reasons they are banned in a number of countries.

We want to bring up a sensitive topic: judgement and forgiveness. As animal welfare professionals, we see some pretty sad, awful situations: animals who arrive ...in horrible neglect, abandoned animals, etc. We then share those animals' stories with you, our Facebook friends. We don't always know the whole backstory, but it can still be tempting to pass judgement on the nameless and faceless people behind these animals. It helps us all cope with our sadness and anger. But those people do have names and do have faces and do have stories. Yes, a handful were purposefully harmful or negligent to their pets, but the reality is most of these people are not "bad" people. They made choices that they thought were good for the pet or for their family, or the best that they could do at the time, or the only option they felt they had, or.... the scenarios can go and on. Obviously, those choices weren't always good, but they could have been made from desperation, a lack of education, a lack of resources, etc. We may not agree with them, but let's avoid judging them and certainly, let's not shame them on social media. So please, remember, that the comments we all make on an animal's post may hit someone right in the heart, perhaps because this was their former pet that they couldn't keep, but they did love. Let's try to extend the compassion we all feel for animals to our fellow humans. Thank you, New Westminster Animal Services