DynamoDogs

15/10/2026

Daytime Adventures followed by satisfied naps.
Good times

14/10/2026

Worth the read. If you can handle the swears.

☀️🐾 GOOD MORNING, YOU BODY-LANGUAGE-ILLITERATE F***S. GOOMBA IS ABOUT TO EDUCATE YOU. 🖕💀

Good morning, motherfluffers. Goomba here. Your favorite disgruntled sanctuary resident, professional grudge holder, and apparently the only son of a bitch who understands that DOGS HAVE BEEN COMMUNICATING WITH HUMANS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND SOME OF YOU STILL CAN’T READ THE FU***NG ROOM.

Today we’re discussing CANINE BODY LANGUAGE, because apparently I need to teach a species that invented the internet how to understand an animal that communicates with its entire body.

🐕 FIRST UP: THE GROWL. ALSO KNOWN AS THE GODDAMN WARNING SYSTEM.

A growl is COMMUNICATION. It can mean “I’m uncomfortable,” “I’m scared,” “Back the hell up,” or “Stop touching me, you persistent potato.”

Growling can also happen during play, so context matters.

STOP PUNISHING DOGS FOR GROWLING!

When you punish a warning growl, you risk teaching your dog to stop warning you. And guess what can happen next? A SNAP OR BITE.

Then everybody stands around screaming, “HE BIT OUT OF NOWHERE!”

NO, DEBORAH. HE SENT YOU SEVENTEEN EMAILS, THREE CERTIFIED LETTERS, AND A FU***NG SMOKE SIGNAL.

YOU IGNORED ALL OF THEM.

🐕 A WAGGING TAIL DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN A HAPPY DOG.

For the love of dog, STOP ASSUMING THIS.

🟢 Loose, sweeping wag: Usually friendly or relaxed when paired with a soft, wiggly body.

🟡 High, fast, stiff wag: Heightened arousal. Could be excitement OR tension.

🟡 Slow, deliberate wag: May indicate uncertainty or cautious interest.

🔴 High, rigid tail with tight movements: Can indicate significant tension, especially with a stiff body.

🔵 Low or tucked tail: Often fear, insecurity, or discomfort.

And PAY ATTENTION TO THE FLUIDITY! A loose, flowing wag is different from a tight, mechanical wag attached to a dog standing like a concrete statue.

Tail carriage also varies by breed.

READ THE ENTIRE DOG, NOT JUST THE ASS ANTENNA.

🐕 CALMING SIGNALS AND NERVOUS BEHAVIORS. THE SUBTLE S**T YOU KEEP MISSING.

Dogs communicate discomfort and sometimes attempt to de-escalate situations through subtle behaviors.

👅 LIP LICKING: Can indicate stress, uncertainty, appeasement, anticipation, excitement, nausea, or simply cleaning their mouth. IT DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN YOUR DOG IS NERVOUS.

But context matters, you absolute walnuts.

Take ME, for example. When Alexis approaches my kennel and I start licking my lips, that could be a sign of tension or discomfort. Because unlike some of you socially confused bastards, I have made it VERY clear that Alexis and I are NOT fu***ng friends.

She thinks she’s visiting a dog.

I’m reviewing the dinner menu.

ALEXIS, MEDIUM RARE. HOLD THE SEASONING. 💀🥩

So read the ENTIRE dog, not just the damn tongue, before somebody becomes an appetizer.

🥱 Yawning: Not always tiredness. Sometimes STRESS.

👀 Looking away: May be trying to disengage. STOP FOLLOWING THEIR FACE WITH YOUR FACE.

🐌 Sniffing the ground: Sometimes a displacement behavior during uncomfortable interactions.

🧊 Freezing: A MAJOR warning sign when accompanied by tension. A still dog is NOT necessarily a calm dog.

🐾 Shaking off: Sometimes releases tension after a stressful interaction.

🐾 Pacing, trembling, or trying to leave: YOUR DOG IS UNCOMFORTABLE. GIVE THEM SPACE.

These behaviors aren’t automatically stress signals. Look at the situation and the other signals happening together.

🐕 THE EARS. YES, THOSE THINGS ATTACHED TO THEIR DAMN HEADS.

👂 Relaxed ears: Usually comfort when the body is loose.

👂 Forward ears: Alertness, curiosity, or intense focus.

👂 Slightly pulled back: Could be friendly appeasement, uncertainty, or nervousness.

👂 Pinned tightly backward: Often fear or significant discomfort, especially with other stress signals.

And remember, breed anatomy and cropped ears can make these signals harder to interpret.

🐕 WHALE EYE. NO, YOUR DOG IS NOT TURNING INTO A FU***NG ORCA. 🐳

Whale eye is when you see the whites of a dog’s eyes, often because they’re turning their head while keeping their eyes on something.

It can indicate fear, anxiety, or discomfort.

Your toddler is hugging the dog. The dog turns away, shows whale eye, licks his lips, and freezes.

THAT IS NOT A FU***NG KODAK MOMENT, KAREN.

THAT IS YOUR CUE TO INTERVENE.

Some dogs naturally show more eye white, so CONTEXT MATTERS.

🐕 STOP FU***NG TOUCHING ME. I DID NOT CONSENT TO YOUR CUDDLE SESSION.

If your dog turns their head away, leans away, ducks your hand, stiffens, closes their mouth, pins their ears, shows whale eye, licks their lips, or tries to walk away while you’re petting or hugging them, TAKE THE FU***NG HINT. These can be signs they’re uncomfortable and want space.

And PARENTS, PAY EXTRA FU***NG ATTENTION WHEN CHILDREN ARE INVOLVED. Dogs don’t necessarily respond to children the same way they respond to adults. Kids are smaller, unpredictable, loud, and often haven’t mastered the concept of personal space. A dog that tolerates an adult’s affection may NOT tolerate a child grabbing, hugging, or climbing on them.

YOUR DOG IS NOT A FU***NG JUNGLE GYM, AND YOUR CHILD IS NOT EXEMPT FROM RESPECTING BOUNDARIES.

Supervise interactions, intervene at the first signs of discomfort, and teach your children to leave dogs alone when they’re resting, eating, or trying to get away. Never leave young children unsupervised with dogs.

And for the love of dog, STOP forcing hugs on us! Most of us don’t appreciate being restrained like we’re getting arrested outside a Waffle House at 2 AM.

AFFECTION SHOULD BE AN INVITATION, NOT A FU***NG HOSTAGE SITUATION.

💀 NOW HERE’S THE PART THAT REALLY PI**ES ME OFF.

Humans expect dogs to tolerate EVERYTHING.

Children climbing on them. Strangers grabbing their faces. Other dogs invading their space. People hugging them when they clearly want to leave.

Then when the dog finally communicates that he’s had enough, suddenly he’s labeled aggressive.

YOU KNOW WHAT’S DANGEROUS? A HUMAN WHO REFUSES TO RESPECT A DOG’S COMMUNICATION.

A growl is not automatically aggression.

A wag is not consent.

A freeze is not compliance.

And a dog walking away is NOT an invitation to chase him down for one more fu***ng hug.

Learn your dog’s body language. Respect their boundaries. Teach your children to do the same.

Because YOUR DOG SHOULD NOT HAVE TO FILE A FORMAL COMPLAINT WITH HIS TEETH TO GET YOU TO LISTEN.

Anyway, I’m going back to judging humanity and wondering how the hell you people became the dominant species.

And Alexis, if you’re reading this, consider this your official notice that my kennel is NOT a fu***ng meet-and-greet booth. 💀

GOOD MORNING. READ YOUR DOG. RESPECT YOUR DOG. AND STOP BEING A FU***NG IDIOT. 🖕🐾

🤎GOOMBA
Sanctuary Resident.
Unpaid Professor of Canine Communication.
President of the Mind Your Fu***ng Business Committee.

STAB Rescue 💫Changing Minds, Changing Lives. 🖤🐾

12/10/2026

I think it’s pretty easy for us to judge whether a dog’s response to something makes sense based on the information we have. I know I’ve done it. ‘It’s just a bin truck.’ ‘That dog isn’t even doing anything.’ ‘There’s nothing scary there.’

Except dogs experience the world VERY differently from us. They can smell things we have absolutely no idea are there, hear things we can’t hear and notice movement, body language and changes in the environment that we might not even register. All of that gets filtered through that particular dog’s genetics, learning history, previous experiences, physical state and what they’ve learned to expect from similar situations.

So when a dog’s behaviour seems ridiculous or completely disproportionate to what we think is happening, sometimes I think we need to give them a bit more credit. It might make perfect sense based on the information available to them.

We can also be pretty quick to give behaviour human descriptions. Stubborn. Dramatic. Jealous. Naughty. Anxious. Overprotective. Attention-seeking. Reactive. Weird. Sometimes those words are useful shorthand, but they can also make us think we understand more than we actually do. Saying a dog is ‘being stubborn’ doesn’t explain why the dog isn’t doing the thing. It just describes how their behaviour looks from our side of the leash.

Sometimes ‘I don’t know’ is actually a much better starting point than immediately deciding we know why a dog is doing something.

Think about something as ordinary as walking into a park. You see some grass, a few trees and perhaps a couple of people in the distance. Your dog might already know another dog passed through recently, there are rabbits somewhere nearby, someone has dropped food under a bench and there’s a dog approaching from behind that you haven’t noticed yet. You’re standing in exactly the same place, but you’re not necessarily experiencing anything close to the same world.

And I think we lose something when we become too determined to squeeze their experience into ours.

None of this means dogs should get to do whatever the hell they want because ‘that’s their lived experience’. Dogs still have to function safely in a world we’ve built for ourselves, and some of the things we expect them to accept are pretty bloody weird when you look at them from the dog’s perspective.

Take the postie.
We know they’re meant to be there.
The dog knows that a stranger arrives at the boundary of their home, stops outside, puts something in the letterbox or walks up the driveway carrying a box, and then leaves again. If your dog barks their head off every time this happens, you can see how they might conclude that their system for dealing with suspicious visitors is working brilliantly. That doesn’t mean we have to accept the barking. It does mean the behaviour becomes a lot less mysterious when we stop looking at the situation purely from our own perspective.

And this is where I think curiosity becomes practically useful, rather than just a nice idea about understanding our dogs.

If your dog does something that doesn’t make sense, resist the urge to immediately decide what it means. Look at what actually happened. What happened immediately before the behaviour? What changed in the environment? Has this happened before? What did the dog do next? What did their behaviour achieve? And is there anything about their body, their history or the situation that might change how they experienced it?

You might still not know exactly why they did it, and you don’t necessarily need to. You just need enough information to make a better decision about what happens next.

Maybe there’s something here you need to train. Maybe the dog doesn’t have the skill you thought they had in this particular context. Maybe you need to manage the situation for now rather than repeatedly putting them in it and hoping they’ll make a different choice. Maybe there’s something physical worth investigating. Maybe their response actually makes perfect sense and you still need to tell them, ‘Nope, you can’t do that.’

Understanding the dog’s perspective doesn’t mean removing boundaries or making excuses for behaviour. It means you’re responding to the dog that’s actually in front of you, rather than the story you’ve already told yourself about why they’re behaving that way.

So the next time your dog does something that leaves you thinking ‘what the actual f**k was THAT?’, that’s probably a pretty good moment to get curious.

What am I missing here?

Because ‘they’re just being stubborn/weird/dramatic/reactive’ gives you almost nowhere useful to go next. Getting curious about what the dog is responding to gives you something you can actually work with.

08/10/2026

Someone asked me the other day how I ended up becoming a dog trainer, and I realised that really, the whole thing started with a chaotic wee kelpie called Cricket.

I got Cricket in November 2020. I'd grown up with dogs in Sweden and had my own before moving overseas, but for years after coming to Australia I just wasn't settled enough to have one. I was studying, moving around, renting, working… there was always some reason why it wasn't really fair or practical.

Eventually things started lining up. I lived somewhere that allowed pets, I had a job that meant I could work from home enough, and for the first time in years I thought, actually, I can do this now. I'd been wanting a dog again for yonks, and because I was doing a lot of long-distance running at the time, I'd thought quite a bit about what would actually suit my life. I wanted something energetic and drivey, keen to work with me, but also hardy enough to come running, camping, travelling and generally tag along on whatever adventure I'd dreamt up that weekend.

So I landed on a kelpie.

Eventually I came across this little rescue girl who I ended up calling Cricket. That wasn't actually her name when I got her. I can't remember what it was now, other than that I thought it was ugly and didn't suit her. She was ridiculously bouncy, so Cricket she became.

I brought her home thinking I knew a reasonable amount about dogs. Turns out I had no fu***ng clue what to do with this particular one.

Cricket had some quirks. She'd spin compulsively outside, chase shadows and lights, completely lose her mind in the car, bark and lunge at other dogs and generally had a LOT going on. She wasn't bad, and I don't think I ever really thought she was bad. She just seemed completely overwhelmed by life and didn't have a clue where to put all of it.

So I started trying to figure her out. I spoke to trainers, bought courses, read everything I could get my hands on, played with her constantly, explored herding and disappeared down increasingly ridiculous rabbit holes about behaviour, genetics, motivation, learning and play. Some things helped, some did bugger-all, and every answer seemed to give me another ten questions.

Somewhere in all of that, the way I looked at Cricket changed too. It became less about ‘how do I stop her doing this?’ and more about trying to understand why the hell she was doing it in the first place. What did she actually need from me? What could I give her an outlet for? And, equally, what did she simply need to learn wasn't an option?

There's one really mundane moment with her that I remember because it felt enormous at the time. We'd moved house by then, and one day Cricket was out in the yard and I called her up onto the patio. She came running up the stairs, flopped down in the sunshine and had a nap.

For most dogs that's completely unremarkable. But when I first brought Cricket home, she couldn't be outside without spinning. She couldn't just lie on the grass, sniff around or do absolutely nothing for a while. And I remember looking at her lying there in the sun and thinking, fu***ng look at you.

By then I'd also started fostering working breeds and had apparently developed a bit of a reputation locally as ‘the kelpie lady’. People would see me out with Cricket and ask what I'd done with her, then start asking questions about their own dogs, and eventually people started asking if I'd actually help them.

So naturally the dog nerdery got increasingly out of hand. I started being mentored by and shadowing other trainers, studying more seriously and becoming increasingly obsessed with all the things Cricket had originally made me curious about.

Eventually all of that turned into Dynamo Dogs.

Cricket never got to be a Dynamo Dogs dog, but she did make it into the business in a pretty important way. The ‘Dynamo’ in Dynamo Dogs comes from her. Poppy might be the one all over the logo, but the name belongs to Crix.

And if you've ever wondered who the little kelpie in the cover photo at the top of this page is… yep. That's Cricket too. She's been sitting up there all this time.

When I look at what I care about in training now, so much of it still comes back to what I was trying to work out with her. Yes, I want your dog to listen to you. There are times when they need to come back because you've called them or accept that no, they don't get to do whatever ridiculous thing has just entered their head.

But I also want to know who they are. What were they built for? What do they need more of? Where can we give them an outlet instead of constantly telling them what not to do? And what do they need to learn so that we can safely give them more freedom?

Because I think that's probably what Cricket taught me more than anything. The point of all this training isn't really the training. It's the life you get to have because of it.

When I went looking for Cricket, I wasn't looking for a training project. I wanted a best mate who could come running and camping and adventuring with me, do fun and silly s**t together and just be part of my life.

And that's still pretty much what I'm trying to help other people build with their dogs. 🧡

03/10/2026

Today’s Adventure Club outings were a slightly damp affair. 🌧️😂

Raincoats on, puddles located, dignity optional.

Turns out ‘adventure lifestyle’ does not come with a fair-weather-only clause. 🐕💦

28/09/2026

I think we've become a bit obsessed with the idea that walking nicely on a leash is how dogs are supposed to experience the world.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely teach leash skills. Being able to get from A to B together without your shoulder being ripped out of its socket is an extremely useful life skill.

But walking beside a human at human speed, attached to a two-metre piece of rope, isn't the pinnacle of dog exercise.

Dogs also need opportunities to move their bodies properly, choose where they go, stop and investigate something for an offensively long time, sniff, run, climb, search, play and generally make some decisions that aren't being micromanaged by the person at the other end of the leash.

That doesn't have to mean opening the front door and wishing them luck. Freedom can happen on a long line. It can happen in safely fenced spaces. It can happen through appropriate off-leash skills, adventures, play and activities where the dog gets some genuine choice about what happens next.

Good leash walking gives us a really useful way of moving through a human world together. I just don't want it to be the only version of 'going for a walk' that a dog ever gets.

26/09/2026

Getting your dog some off leash time and a bit of exposure practise as well.
Welcome to Western Sydney’s outer burbs.

21/09/2026

I saw a post on socials about scheduling your joy the other day, and naturally my brain immediately turned it into a thing about dogs.

I think we dog people are particularly good at getting caught up in all the things we should be working on. There is always something that could be better: recall, leash walking, reactivity, settling, engagement, confidence, fitness, or whatever particular thing your dog has decided should become your latest project.

And some of those things genuinely matter. I train my dogs because I want everyday life to be easier, because I want them to have more freedom, and because there are things I want us to be able to do together that require certain skills.
But that's also the point. I want us to be able to do things together.

Training should make your life with your dog bigger. It shouldn't become your whole life with your dog.

You don't have to wait for the hypothetical future version who recalls perfectly, never reacts, walks beautifully and has finally stopped doing that one incredibly annoying thing before you're allowed to enjoy them. Your dog doesn't need to be good at everything, and not everything you do together needs to have a training goal attached to it.

So put some of the good stuff in the calendar too. Go somewhere purely because it looks nice. Let your dog spend an unreasonable amount of time sniffing something disgusting. Play the stupid game they love. Take the unnecessary detour. Plan the beach morning, the bush walk or the completely unnecessary dog-related side quest before your calendar fills itself with everything else.

Work on the things that are making life difficult, absolutely. Just don't get so busy working on your dog that you forget to actually enjoy having them.

Life with them is happening now.

(Inspired by and their excellent reminder to actually schedule the good stuff.)

16/09/2026

Most dog problems are extremely successful dog behaviour

I reckon about 99% of the things people describe to me as their dog's 'problems' are actually perfectly normal dog behaviour that happens to be extremely inconvenient when you live with a dog.

Dogs bark. They chase things. They use their mouths. They dig, sniff, jump up, get wildly excited about stuff, steal things that smell interesting and repeat behaviours that have worked spectacularly well for them in the past.

None of that means we just shrug and let them run riot because 'dogs will be dogs'. We still have to live together, and sometimes the perfectly normal dog thing is a massive pain in the arse.

But I find it much more useful to start with 'why does this make sense to the dog?' than 'how do I stop my dog being an as***le?'

Sometimes they need to learn a different behaviour. Sometimes we need to give them an appropriate place to do the thing they're trying to do. Sometimes we need better management.

And sometimes, unfortunately, I have to tell the human that they've spent the last two years accidentally teaching their dog to do exactly the thing they've now hired me to make disappear.

Dogs are exceptionally good at learning. Occasionally that's the problem. 😂

14/09/2026

Your dog has a perfectly respectable name on their vet records.
Obviously nobody actually calls them that.

I want the full nickname evolution from their legal name through to whatever completely unrelated noise you currently yell across the house.

Bonus points if you can explain how the hell you got from one to the other.

ps: Poppy and Gus? Nah, more like Popsicle, then Popcorn, Butterface and Stinker. Along with Gustavo, Kelpasaurus Rex, Dingbat and Screech Queen.