Spicy Dogs

20/10/2026

CALLING ALL STREET & VILLAGE DOG ADOPTERS! 🐕🙋🏼‍♀️

If you could go back to when you first adopted your dog, what’s *ONE* thing you wish someone had helped you understand?

Maybe something about their behaviour, their needs, their transition into home life, or something you weren’t prepared for at all.

I’m working on educational resources to better support people living with former free-living dogs, and rather than assuming what adopters need, I’d love to hear directly from you.

What was confusing, challenging, surprising, or simply something you wish you’d known sooner?

Share your experience in the comments. 👇👇👇

Your answers will help shape what I create next 🫶

13/10/2026

I let my dogs off leash and I agree with a lot of people who hate off-leash dogs because what they usually hate isn’t freedom, it’s unmanaged dogs.

It’s the dog who runs straight into another dog’s space.
The guardian calling “he’s friendly!” from 50 metres away.
The dog who ignores another dog’s attempts to create distance.
The dog whose freedom comes at the expense of everyone else’s!

I agree that is not fair but I also think the off-leash debate has become far too binary.

Behaviour is rarely that simple, a leash is just a management tool and does not automatically create social competence, responsiveness, emotional regulation or safety. Also, being off leash does not automatically mean a dog is out of control.

My dogs spend a lot of time off leash because I know them and the environments we move through. I know their social preferences and what situations are likely to cause conflict. I also know when they can make good decisions and when I need to step in.

My dog having agency should never mean another dog loses theirs.

If another dog does not want contact, or if someone asks me to call my dog away, that matters; If my dog cannot reliably disengage from another dog, then that situation probably isn’t appropriate for off-leash freedom.

At the same time, I also think we lose something when the answer to every social interaction is simply tighter control.

Dogs communicate, negotiate distance, choose who they want to interact with, they disengage, learn from social experiences and use movement to regulate themselves.

For some dogs, constantly restricting those options can contribute to frustration and conflict too.

So the real question is: Is this dog, in this environment, with this guardian, capable of having freedom without compromising someone else’s safety or choice?

Your reactive/anxious dog deserves distance, and my dog deserves opportunities for agency. Those two things are not incompatible: off-leash is not automatically the problem.

To me, the real issue is whether the human is taking responsibility for the freedom they are giving their dog.

12/10/2026

I was reading a post where someone received a huge amount of backlash for saying they don’t walk their dogs every single day and it made me think about my own dogs.

They have so much freedom of choice that sometimes I set off for a walk with them… and end up walking alone.

Then, while I’m working, they’ll come and nudge me with great urgency because apparently something of extreme importance is happening outside and I absolutely need to open the gate.

I know these things about them because they are allowed to tell me.

And I wonder how many pet dogs genuinely get opportunities to say no? To change their mind? To choose when they want to explore, rest, interact or disengage?

Probably far fewer than we like to think...

Modern pet dogs live incredibly controlled lives where we decide when they go outside, where they walk, how fast they walk..Who they interact with or not, when & what they eat , etc

On top of all of that, we often add another layer of expectations about what a “good dog” should be:

Say hello nicely - Ignore that dog - Walk beside me - Don’t bark - Don’t pull - Don’t chase - Don’t growl!
Enjoy long hikes -Be satisfied with five-minute walks -Be social, but not *too* social. -Be energetic, but settle instantly when asked...

The problem isn’t that structure is bad.

Dogs need safety, boundaries, and they might need management but when almost every aspect of their life is decided for them, we lose something important: we lose the opportunity to see who that dog actually is (preferences, social choices, rhythms, dislikes, curiosity, boundaries, etc).

Additionally, restricted choice may also contribute to frustration, chronic arousal and behaviours that we later try to “fix” through more control.

08/10/2026

Some people might say that I romanticise the lives of free-living dogs..and maybe, compared with a lot of the content online, I do choose to show a different side.

There is already so much content documenting suffering — injuries, disease, starvation, cruelty — often because those realities need visibility and funding.

On this page, I also choose to show the other parts of their lives: friendships, play, rest, freedom, social relationships..The ordinary moments where nothing bad is happening.

That doesn’t mean hardship doesn’t exist, it just means hardship is not the whole story.

This is why blanket statements like “street dogs never deeply sleep because they are always scanning for danger” bother me.

Some dogs absolutely live in environments where vigilance is necessary, but I also regularly see free-living dogs sleeping deeply, stretched out, belly-up, completely relaxed in places they know and feel safe.

Their lives are not universally wonderful and they are not universally miserable either.

I’m not interested in romanticising them, I’m interested in showing them as they actually are: complex animals living complex lives.

05/10/2026

Predation is one of the behaviours that can most profoundly change a guardian’s relationship with their dog. It definitely shook my relationship with PingPong when it happened.

We tend to moralise predation very quickly.. We call the dog cruel, vicious, dangerous, bad, etc. We tend to forget that predatory behaviour exists outside those moral categories. Such animal instincts involve no morality

It's like the dog suddenly became someone else, but that's not the case, it is just that the human is suddenly forced to confront something they may never have associated with the dog they love.

We tend to moralise predation very quickly.. We call the dog cruel, vicious, dangerous, bad, etc. We tend to forget that predatory behaviour exists outside those moral categories. There is no moral involved during such animal instincs.

We tend to moralise predation very quickly.. We call the dog cruel, vicious, dangerous, bad, etc. We tend to forget that predatory behaviour exists outside those moral categories. There is no morality involved in such animal instincts.

It's like the dog suddenly became someone else, but that's not the case; it is just that the human is suddenly forced to confront something they may never have associated with the dog they love. There is no morality involved in such animal instincts.s.

However, my point here is that understanding the behaviour allows us to move away from moral doubts and critics' “what kind of dog would do this?” toward better questions:
- What part of the predatory sequence was expressed?
- What contexts increase risk?
- What animals are vulnerable?
- What needs to change now?
- Can I still see my dog as the same individual, even after seeing a part of them that frightened or upset me?
That doesn’t mean we dismiss the harm, or the fact that another animal has been injured or killed, that obviously matters. Management here really matters. We have a responsibility, and we learnt to do better to keep everyone safe..
I really believe that the hardest part of behaviour work is not changing the dog; it is helping the human make peace with the fact that dogs are not only companions, but they are animals too!

27/09/2026

When given a choice, not every dog wants to say hello and we should respect that!

In this reel, I do the same simple thing: I crouch down and make myself available and the dogs respond very differently, as you can see!

That variation it’s really important and it matters.

We often talk about dogs as if sociability is something they should offer us (aren’t they just human’s best friend?!) especially when they are friendly, or used to people.

Not all dogs want to interact with strangers, especially free living dogs.. For some dogs, curiosity wins while others, with distance feels better.

It is when dogs have agency that we get to see their preferences (preference is information).

It can tell us something about the individual in front of us: their confidence, history, social motivation, current emotional state, and what feels safe or worthwhile in that moment.

I don’t believe we should try to make every dog more social; the most respectful thing we can do is make interaction available… and accept the answer, even when it stings our ego!

It is always choice that reveals the dog.

26/09/2026

Following yesterday’s post

Fear in our relationship with dogs.

25/09/2026

We talk a lot about getting our dogs to trust us, but much less about what happens when we are afraid to trust them. Fear changes all relationships; the same is true with our dogs, too.

It can make us tighten the leash, grab, correct, repeat ourselves louder, or ask for more control when what our dog actually needs is more support.

Yesterday I watched two puppies in almost opposite situations: one was given too little freedom because her guardian was afraid she wouldn’t come back, despite being a relatively safe environment; The other was given too much freedom in an unsafe environment, and when she made a risky choice, that fear turned into frustration and correction.

Both puppies were clearly loved.. But love doesn’t automatically prevent fear from shaping the way we relate to our dogs. We can be terrified of losing our dog, of them getting hurt, of making a mistake, of losing control...And without noticing, fear starts making decisions for us.

Let's remember that dogs don’t experience our intention; they experience our body, our actions, our voice, and our tension and emotions.

Have you ever asked yourself: "Who do I become in our relationship when I’m afraid?” instead of the usual “Can I trust my dog?”

Safety and management matter. This isn't about blindly “trusting your dog” and hoping for the best.

It's about creating environments where they can succeed, giving them freedom they are ready for, and noticing when our own fear is starting to shape the relationship we're trying so hard to protect.

I will write more about the two puppies who made me think about this in my Substack: Two puppies, two extremes, and the same human mistake.

25/09/2026

I’ve assisted with and broken up dozens of dog fights.

Over time, I’ve become comfortable enough around aggression that my brain doesn’t immediately go into panic. I can usually stay clear-headed, assess what’s happening and think strategically.

But fights are never simple.

They are fast, unpredictable and full of variables -the dogs involved, their relationships, arousal levels, space, movement, previous history, human positioning.

Having to make decisions with urgency while also predicting what might happen next is incredibly difficult.

PingPong has unfortunately given me a lot of lived experience with this. He has an ongoing territorial feud with some neighbouring dogs, and in the three years we’ve lived here I’ve had to break up more than a handful of pack-vs-pack fights. Those are particularly hard, especially when you’re the only human there.

However, because of that history, I know my dog very well, also during conflict.

I know what he is capable of, with dogs he has a territorial conflict with, he can absolutely escalate into a real fight.

But in other contexts, his aggression is usually much more ritualised: loud, clear, distance-increasing, and used to de-escalate rather than continue the conflict.

This situation caught both of us by surprise.

I was sitting on a sunbed with PingPong when this new, highly aroused intact male came into our space and began repeatedly harassing him.

In the video, I realise I’m in a difficult position: I’m physically behind the other dog, and my presence may be increasing his confidence.

So I try to move out of that position and across the conflict, while also making sure PingPong knows I’m there to support him.

The problem?

My intervention backfired.

And that is exactly why dog aggression is so interesting, and so humbling.

Even when you know the dogs, understand the behaviour and have experience managing conflict, your own movement can change the interaction in ways you didn’t intend.

Can you see why my movement changed the dynamic, and what would have you done differently?

22/09/2026

Nice watch! Recommended ✌️

Street dogs in India, Egypt, Mexico and Romania look like the same ...