Buddhahood Canine Behavior

Call Website Contact the business

Buddhahood Canine Behavior At Buddhahood Canine Behavior, we go beyond obedience.

We focus on understanding the dog in front of us, building relationships through leadership, creating a balanced state of mind, and helping dogs and humans thrive together.

I struggle with the adoptions part. Because I’m not just handing someone a dog. I’m handing over a dog I’ve spent months...
10/16/2026

I struggle with the adoptions part.

Because I’m not just handing someone a dog. I’m handing over a dog I’ve spent months learning, and hoping the person taking the leash understands how much there still is to learn.

I think that’s the heart of this post: I hate the gap between wanting a dog and being willing to understand the dog you’re getting.

The application says, “We want a cuddle buddy.” I’m thinking: What happens when this dog needs space? When affection isn’t what helps? When living safely with your resident dog requires more patience, guidance, and separation than you pictured?

And then you become the difficult foster. Too many questions. Too much structure. Too many things to think about when someone just wants…….. to bring a dog home.

You want them to have a beautiful life together. You’re trying to find out whether the human is willing to do what makes that life possible.

Being a trainer means I also see the other side of adoption. I see where things go wrong. Where behavior gets misinterpreted, where people overestimate their ability to handle a dog, and where good intentions meet situations they weren’t prepared for.

Those experiences come with me into every adoption conversation. When I ask questions, I’m thinking about what daily life will look like once the excitement wears off.

And I care deeply about every dog that enters and leaves my home. My investment in their life doesn’t end when I hand someone the leash. My investment in their life doesn’t end when I hand someone the leash. But my ability to influence what happens next gets a whole lot smaller. And that’s the part I struggle with.

Yesterday, while sharing some insight with a foster who is navigating life with an insecure dog, I found myself reflecti...
10/15/2026

Yesterday, while sharing some insight with a foster who is navigating life with an insecure dog, I found myself reflecting on something I think we often overlook in our relationships with dogs.

This particular dog struggles with changes in her environment. When something is unfamiliar, unexpected, or different from what she’s come to know, she becomes uncertain about how to handle it. And underneath that uncertainty is something I think deserves more attention. She hasn’t yet developed enough trust in the humans around her to believe that they are capable of recognizing and handling those changes with her.

It got me thinking about how much time we spend teaching our dogs to disengage from the world around them. We ask them to look at us, ignore distractions, leave things alone, and redirect their attention. And while those skills absolutely have their place, I wonder how many opportunities for connection we miss because we’re so focused on what we want our dogs to stop paying attention to.

Sometimes, when one of my dogs notices something outside and becomes alert, I become alert with them. I look in the direction they’re looking. I listen. I try to understand what caught their attention.

I’m not necessarily asking them to do anything differently. I’m simply acknowledging that something in our shared environment caught their attention, and I’m paying attention too.

It’s almost like when someone sends you a video because they want you to see something. They aren’t necessarily asking you to explain it, fix it, or even have an opinion about it. They’re simply sharing something with you. And I think there’s something incredibly meaningful about that.

I don’t want my dogs to believe they have to stop noticing the world in order to be connected to me. I want them to notice the world with me.

Think about how many dogs spend their days monitoring everything happening around them while their humans remain completely oblivious. Until the dog barks. Until they growl. Until they react. Suddenly, we’re paying attention. But often, we’re paying attention only to the dog’s behavior rather than the environment that prompted it.

Continues in comments:⬇️

10/14/2026

Being a trainer doesn’t mean I graduate from the basics. I still do them every day.

I still use leashes, muzzles, kennels, and separation. I still manage my environment. And I don’t need every dog to play together. Coexistence is plenty.

I just trust the basics. They can keep your ass out of trouble.

Experience doesn’t replace the basics. It makes you understand why they matter.

Do the basics. Slow down. Give your dog time.

10/02/2026

Pit Bull Awareness Month should include awareness of the dog’s needs, not just defending their reputation.

On one side, you have people who believe they’re all dangerous. On the other, people who believe they’re all harmless. Both generalizations miss the dog in front of us. The truth lies in the middle, and that truth is that every dog deserves to be understood as an individual

Sometimes, the people who love them most are also the ones who really misunderstand them. They can do just as much harm as the people that consider them dangerous.

We call them “house hippos” to soften their image. But when that becomes the whole story, we overlook their history, their abilities, and their needs. We put them into situations because we want to prove something, without asking whether that situation is right for that dog.

It’s time to channel their drives.
It’s time to honor their athleticism.
It’s time to build a partnership through fulfillment.

Let’s stop expecting every one of them to be dog friendly. Let’s stop dismissing genetics, then getting frustrated when a dog shows traits we chose to ignore.

Fear can do harm, too. When we assume a dog is dangerous because of how they look, we can overlook their actual behavior and deny them opportunities they could thrive in.

Whether we’re defending them or afraid of them, we owe them the chance to be seen for who they actually are.

Love them enough to understand them. Advocate for the life they need, not just the image we want.

I had absolutely no idea my Hills I Will Die On post would reach this many people.What has stood out to me the most isn’...
09/23/2026

I had absolutely no idea my Hills I Will Die On post would reach this many people.

What has stood out to me the most isn’t the number of views or shares. It’s the number of people asking questions, sharing their experiences and looking for guidance.

It’s made me realize just how many fosters are out there wanting to do better by the dogs in their care but not necessarily knowing where to turn for help.

I’m considering putting together an online education and support community specifically for fosters, where we can talk about dog behavior, decompression, boundaries, introductions, adoption preparation and all the things that can make fostering so challenging.

I’d love to know what you struggle with the most. If you had access to a trainer who works directly in rescue, what would you want to learn?

Foster’s, if you had access to a professional trainer, what’s the ONE thing you’d want help with most?

I want to hear from you! I've put together a quick form so you can share what kind of support you'd find most helpful and join the waitlist if you're interested.
https://forms.gle/TgYfH6x5rXfaZrS4A

Apparently I have a lot of hills I am willing to die on.But the longer I work on both sides of rescue, both before adopt...
09/19/2026

Apparently I have a lot of hills I am willing to die on.

But the longer I work on both sides of rescue, both before adoption and after it, the more I realize how much needs to change in the way we prepare fosters, adopters and even rescue organizations themselves.

Getting a dog out of the shelter is not the finish line. We have to get better at looking at the whole picture before that dog ever goes home, making better matches, understanding the dog in front of us, setting realistic expectations and giving people the right information early enough that we are not constantly trying to fix things after they have already gone sideways. Emotions lead a lot of decisions in rescue and adoption, and emotions are not stable. We feel bad, we fall in love, we want to save them, we want the placement to work, but the dog still needs us to look past how we feel and make decisions based on what they actually need.

A lot of rescue work is focused on saving dogs from where they came from. A lot of my work as a trainer is helping save dogs from where they ended up after adoption.

Most people in rescue never really see that side of it. Trainers do. We see the relationship problems, the mismatches, the expectations that were never realistic, the warning signs that were missed and the behaviors people swear came out of nowhere.

That changes how you look at rescue.

It makes it really hard to believe the job is done just because the dog made it into a home.

So yes, apparently I have a lot of hills.

And I will probably keep adding to the list.

Whether you are fostering or adopting, the relationship has already started. How you move them through a doorway, how you respond when they hesitate,

09/19/2026

Contrary to popular belief, the shelter environment can actually give us a tremendous amount of information about a dog. It gives us an opportunity to see how that dog handles stress, novelty, frustration, environmental pressure, unfamiliar people, recovery, and change.

And I do not let one moment determine whether a dog is a green flag or a red flag. A dog jumping on the kennel door does not automatically mean high energy or difficult. A dog sitting quietly at the front of the kennel does not automatically mean calm. I am looking at the whole picture.

I do not use treats at any point during my evaluations. I want to know how much this dog actually wants to engage with a human without food changing the interaction. How socially interested are they? How much are they choosing to connect with me? How involved are they in everything happening around them? How instinctual or environmentally driven are they?

Is this a dog that can disengage from the environment and come into relationship with a person, or is the environment the most important thing in the room? That matters more than people realize.

If eye contact creates pressure, that is information. If a small environmental change makes the dog struggle, that is information. If the dog recovers quickly, that is information too. The goal is to understand what that struggle may tell us about the dog outside of the shelter.

The reality is that I could take a lot of dogs home from the shelter and they would probably thrive with me. That is not the standard I can use when evaluating for rescue.

I cannot expect the average foster or adopter to have the handling experience, timing, knowledge, environmental setup, or understanding that I have spent years building. Our fosters are not dog trainers.

so many of the things that eventually become problems in a dog’s real life were there much earlier. We just did not slow down enough to see them. But people have to understand what the dog needs first.

When we dismiss everything we see as “just the shelter,” we risk putting a dog into the wrong home with the wrong expectations and then acting surprised when those same struggles show up later.
(Continued in comments

Address

Dallas, TX

Telephone

+19728917998

Website

,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Buddhahood Canine Behavior posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Buddhahood Canine Behavior:

Shortcuts

Share

Category