Joshua Wood: Coaching & Canine Education

09/30/2026

09/23/2026

Please put this on your calendar and make plans to attend this fun event to support our Veterans!

09/15/2026

The Wolves We Carry

The weight didn’t begin at the coffin.

It began before I ever walked into the building.

I already knew why I was there. I already knew what had happened. I already knew there was no version of this story where my best friend walked back out with me.

I was there to prepare Jay for his final journey.

I walked into the building where they were caring for his body, and eventually I found myself doing something I had done countless times before.

Taking care of a uniform.

Measuring. Straightening. Making sure everything was where it belonged.

Except this wasn’t a uniform inspection.

We weren’t preparing for a board or getting ready for a ball.

I was an es**rt.

I was preparing my best friend for transportation, and I would be taking him on that journey.

It’s hard to measure when you’re peering through water.

It’s hard to straighten a uniform when your body is telling you to get away from what is happening in front of you.

There are alarms going off inside you.

Part of you wants to run.

Part of you wants to collapse.

Part of you is angry.

Part of you loves this person so much that simply standing there hurts.

And somehow, another part says:

Finish the job.

Maybe that is where the two wolves actually live.

Not as good and evil fighting for control, but as competing information arriving at the same time.

The wolf telling me to run wasn’t necessarily wrong.

Neither was the one telling me to stay.

I needed both to stand in that room.

At one point, the individual caring for Jay’s coffin asked the person accompanying me if he knew him.

He did.

We knew him.

And I kept working.

I can assure you, the journey that followed was nothing like the movie Taking Chance. My dress uniform brought attention, but more than anything, it brought questions.

Some of those questions were difficult to answer because of the responsibility I had been entrusted with.

But I answered them.

I took Jay to his final resting place.

I wrote a goodbye speech.

It’s hard to write a goodbye speech to your best friend.

It’s even harder to stand in front of thousands of people and give it.

But I did.

I laid him to rest.

And then I came home.

Only to discover that one of my soldiers had committed su***de.

Another memorial.

Another speech.

Except this one carried a different kind of weight.

He had told me.

He told me he wanted to commit su***de.

I spoke with him.

I listened to him.

And there were two wolves there too.

Because when someone you care about tells you something like that, desperation has a voice.

You want to grab hold of them so tightly that they can never get away from you.

But you can’t hold someone so desperately that they can’t get free.

And you can’t run from what they’re telling you because you’re afraid of what might happen.

Neither works.

You have to somehow stand in that fire with them.

You have to listen.

You have to care.

You have to choose your words without allowing your own desperation to choose them for you.

And somewhere in that conversation is a possibility you desperately don’t want to accept:

This might be the last time I ever speak to this person.

You don’t stand in that kind of fire with only one wolf.

Love is there.

Fear is there.

Compassion is there.

Anger may be there.

Hope is there.

Desperation is there.

And none of them, by themselves, are equipped to carry the entire moment.

You carry all of them.

Years later, another friend of mine committed su***de.

I had lived with this man.

I trained with him.

I stood in his wedding.

He was strong. He was a good leader.

And when I learned that he had taken his own life, something changed in the way I understood the problem.

Because if this thing could come for him—

Oh s**t.

Maybe this thing could come for me.

Whatever this thing is.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve spent so many years searching for answers surrounding su***de.

Not because I think I’ve solved it.

I haven’t.

I’ve lost too many people to pretend the answer is simple.

But I’ve continued looking.

And somewhere along that search, I encountered Honor Tribe Outdoors.

Three years ago, they invited me fishing.

They invited me back the following year.

And they’re bringing me back again this year.

Somewhere along the way, their mission statement stopped being words on a page.

I experienced it.

And without even knowing Brad’s entire story, when I speak with him, I recognize something familiar.

The willingness to carry weight.

The willingness to keep searching.

The willingness to do something.

Honor Tribe Outdoors is part of that pursuit.

They create connection. They create belonging. They continue reaching into a community that loses too many of its own.

I’ve spent years asking questions about what we can do.

I’ve watched them pursue an answer.

Three years ago, they invited me to participate.

This year, I’m helping sponsor it.

That’s the impact their pursuit has had on me.

And that’s why I’m asking you to help me support Honor Tribe Outdoors.

Motorcycle photo: Jay is in the middle of
Center: Epperson
Woodland Camo: Dunlap is far right

09/15/2026

Join us in supporting Honor Tribe Outdoors as they bring healing, hope and fellowship to our veterans and Gold Star families—one outdoor adventure at a time! 🇺🇸❤️

09/14/2026

Below is today’s conflict post. Tomorrow will bring something heavier—a personal story that also helps explain why I believe organizations like Honor Tribe Outdoors are worthwhile investments.

I’m not sure how you’ll experience these stories. Some of them are difficult. Some are uncomfortable. Some may seem like strange things to put on a business page.

But for me, they are part of my résumé.

They are evidence of what I’ve carried, what I’ve overcome, what those experiences developed in me, and how they shaped the way I now think about conflict, acceptance, relationships, dogs, and people.

I’m not sharing them because I want you to feel sorry for me.

I’m sharing them because if I’m going to put coaching beside my name, I think you deserve to understand something about the person asking you to trust him with part of your development.

This is where some of that philosophy came from.

And these stories aren’t only about how far I’ve come.

They’re also about how far I still intend to go.

The Two Wolves

There is an old parable about two wolves that live within us.

One wolf is dark. It carries anger, fear, resentment, jealousy, suspicion, aggression, selfishness, and disgust.

The other is light. It carries compassion, patience, forgiveness, generosity, humility, trust, hope, excitement, and love.

In the familiar telling, the wolves are locked in battle.

The student asks:

“Which wolf will win?”

And the teacher answers:

“The one you feed.”

I’m willing to feed both.

Not because both wolves are inherently wise.

Not because every feeling deserves expression.

And certainly not because every impulse deserves indulgence.

I feed both because both are part of me—and because starving one does not necessarily make the other wiser.

Maybe the mistake begins with assigning them colors in the first place.

We assume anger is dark and compassion is light. Aggression belongs to one wolf while love belongs to the other. Then we quietly make another assumption: that the light wolf should organize our behavior while the dark wolf needs to be controlled, suppressed, or eliminated.

But context complicates that considerably.

There are environments where aggression is useful. There are moments when fear keeps us alive. Suspicion may cause us to slow down long enough to notice something important. Anger may provide enough energy to establish a boundary we have repeatedly failed to establish.

And there are environments where the supposedly light wolf can lead us somewhere destructive.

Compassion can become enabling.

Patience can become paralysis.

Forgiveness can become permission.

Hope can keep us committed to something that no longer exists.

Desire can become impulsivity.

Pleasure can become addiction.

Relief can become escapism.

Neither wolf gets to claim wisdom simply because of the category we placed it in.

But there’s another problem.

The wolf doesn’t always growl for a reason.

At least not for the reason we think.

Maybe I’m angry because someone violated a boundary.

Or maybe I slept four hours last night.

Maybe I’m suspicious because something genuinely doesn’t add up.

Or maybe something happening today resembles something that happened ten years ago closely enough that my nervous system is responding before I understand why.

Maybe I’m irritable because I’m hungry.

Maybe I’m lonely.

Maybe I’ve been carrying stress for three weeks.

Maybe something happened five minutes ago that has absolutely nothing to do with the person standing in front of me.

There is still causality there.

But causality does not guarantee accuracy.

The presence of a feeling does not prove the story I attach to it.

And that makes the problem much more interesting.

Because now I have two wolves carrying information while also recognizing that the information itself can be distorted.

And I am not standing somewhere outside of this system as a perfectly rational observer.

I am the system.

My history is in the room.

My biology is in the room.

My temperament, conditioning, relationships, experiences, fatigue, desires, fears, expectations, and whatever happened five minutes ago are all in the room.

And somehow, from inside all of that, I still have to make a decision.

So perhaps development is not learning which wolf to feed.

Perhaps development is increasing our capacity to stand in the presence of both.

To experience anger without immediately becoming aggression.

To experience compassion without immediately surrendering a boundary.

To experience fear without automatically retreating.

To experience desire without automatically pursuing it.

To experience resentment without immediately punishing someone.

To experience love without assuming that love tells us what we should do.

That does not mean both wolves always receive equal weight.

Context matters.

Sometimes I may need one wolf to organize the other.

If I am frightened but the situation requires action, aggression may temporarily organize fear.

If I am furious but the situation requires restraint, compassion may organize anger.

If compassion is encouraging me to tolerate something destructive, anger may be precisely what interrupts it.

Neither wolf disappears.

One simply provides enough structure to navigate the problem in front of me.

And perhaps my ability to do that depends partly on development.

Am I developed enough to hold both wolves here?

Can I tolerate the tension between them without immediately needing to discharge it?

Can I be furious with someone and recognize that telling them exactly what I think may accomplish nothing because they are incapable or unwilling to receive it?

Now I have another problem.

What do I do with the anger?

Suppressing it doesn’t necessarily eliminate it.

Expressing it doesn’t necessarily resolve it.

So perhaps I have to contain it.

Direct it.

Write.

Train.

Walk.

Build something.

Think.

Wait.

Put the energy somewhere that does not require pretending it isn’t there.

That is different from starving the wolf.

I heard it.

I simply didn’t obey it.

And sometimes I will obey it.

Because context matters.

There are circumstances where aggression, fear, excitement, compassion, and trust can exist simultaneously and contribute to the same behavior.

Think about assaulting a house in combat.

There may be extreme aggression.

There may also be excitement.

There may be fear.

There may be trust.

There may be concern for the people beside you.

There may be a willingness to harm one person precisely because you are trying to protect another.

Which wolf is that?

Both.

They can even feed one another.

The problem is no longer determining which wolf is good.

The problem is developing enough capacity to carry the complexity of both while operating inside an environment that will not give us complete information.

And eventually, we still have to act.

I can gather information.

I can examine my response.

I can question whether I’m seeing the situation clearly.

I can consider another explanation.

I can ask whether this feeling belongs entirely to what is happening now or whether I brought some of it with me.

But eventually examination reaches its limit.

I will never possess every variable.

So I gather enough information to make the most informed decision available to me.

Then I choose.

That choice does not become correct simply because I thought carefully about it.

Development does not grant omniscience.

Self-awareness does not guarantee good decisions.

Sometimes I will listen to the dark wolf and discover that it was wrong.

Sometimes I will listen to the light wolf and discover that it led me somewhere I should never have gone.

Sometimes I may never know.

But the consequences provide new information.

And now that information becomes part of the next decision.

That is development.

Not becoming the light wolf.

Not killing the dark wolf.

Not reaching some final state where our behavior becomes perfectly aligned with who we imagine ourselves to be.

Development is iterative.

We encounter something.

Both wolves respond.

We interpret their signals through an imperfect system.

We act with incomplete information.

We experience consequences.

Those consequences become information.

And the person who encounters the next problem is no longer exactly the person who encountered the last one.

So if the student asks:

“Which wolf should I feed?”

My answer is:

Both.

Listen to both.

Question both.

Learn what each is capable of.

Learn what happens when one overwhelms the other.

Learn when one needs to organize the other.

Develop the capacity to hold both when the situation requires it.

And understand that listening to either one does not guarantee you will make the right decision.

You are making decisions from inside the system, with whatever information and development are available to you at that moment.

Then you live with what follows.

You learn.

You develop.

And when the wolves appear again, perhaps you are a little more capable of standing between them.

Not because they have become easier to control.

Because you have become more capable of carrying both.

09/13/2026

We’re going to continue stirring/adding ingredients to our pot of chili. Because ingredients and heat matter.

Acceptance: Said vs. Unsaid

Here’s another place we can explore the idea of conflict

Imagine two individual selves—two different paths of development, but the same person at the beginning.

One speaks.

One doesn’t.

Whether you choose to speak or remain silent, there are consequences: mental, emotional, and behavioral effects that follow an event, action, or stressor. There is no free ride here. Silence doesn’t protect you from consequence. It simply gives you a different set of consequences to accept.

Maybe not speaking begins to tear at the structure of you in this one area. Then it starts showing up elsewhere—in how you make decisions at work, in life, and in your relationships with dogs, humans, and yourself.

You can accept that consequence. You can develop in that direction. You can absolutely remain there.

Maybe you want to speak, but somewhere along the way you resolve within yourself:

“This is just who I am.”

And eventually, I don’t say these things can become because I’m not someone who says these things.

But speaking has consequences too.

Speaking is often uncomfortable because it is the revealer.

It can become the dark figure that drags you into the depths of yourself and puts weight on everything you thought you knew. Because once something is spoken, the outside world gets a vote.

The other person may receive it. Reject it. Misunderstand it. Reciprocate it. Establish a boundary. Walk away. Or reveal something you never expected.

And now you have something else to accept.

Can you tolerate being misunderstood? Can you survive rejection without abandoning yourself? Can you discover that you were wrong? Can you hear a boundary without retaliating against it? Can you express desire without turning desire into entitlement? Can you receive an answer you desperately didn’t want?

If you can stomach that, the developmental process could produce something quite strong.

You accept the consequences.

The truths revealed.

The feelings that follow.

And whatever those things reveal about you.

I’m not saying, “Say whatever the f**k you want, whenever you want.”

You can put something across simply as information and see how it is received:

Here is something true about my internal experience. I’m going to put it into the world carefully enough that you remain free to do whatever you choose with it.

Then you accept what comes back.

Neither person gets out untouched.

The self who remains silent pays for silence. The self who speaks pays for revelation. And repeated enough times, those choices—and the consequences you are willing to carry—participate in constructing the person you become.

But there is another possibility here.

Sometimes acceptance means accepting the path you’re forced to choose.

There are circumstances I would never willingly choose. Sometimes another person makes a choice. Sometimes an opportunity disappears. Sometimes reality simply removes an option that mattered deeply to me.

And suddenly, saying that I “choose my path” isn’t entirely true.

I may not have chosen the circumstances. I may not have chosen the loss. I may not even want any of the options that remain.

The choice may have been made for me.

But I still have a choice in what I do with what remains.

That distinction matters to me.

Acceptance is not necessarily agreement. It is not approval. It does not require me to pretend that I wanted something to happen or that I am at peace with its consequences.

And acceptance is not resignation.

Resignation says:

“There is nothing I can do.”

Acceptance says:

“This is what is true. What do I do now?”

Sometimes the most honest version of choice is not choosing the road I wanted. It is recognizing that the road I wanted no longer exists—and choosing how I will walk the one that remains.

That path will have consequences too.

It will ask something of me. It will shape something in me. And I may have to accept things about myself, other people, or the world that I desperately wish were different.

So maybe confidence isn’t really the question.

Both selves could be confident.

Both could be afraid.

Both could believe they are doing the right thing.

Acceptance asks something harder:

Which consequences am I willing to carry—and what will carrying them develop in me?

09/12/2026

Conflict: A Pot of Chili

The direction we’re traveling in with Joshua Wood: Coaching & Canine Education is going to introduce more conversation around conflict—what it is, what it tells us, and what we can do with the information it provides.

And I want to introduce that conversation with something simple:

A pot of chili.

Imagine you want to make the best pot of chili you possibly can. Not just once, either. You want to understand it well enough that you can make something good, recognize why it’s good, and eventually repeat it.

So you choose a pot.

You start adding ingredients. Some are familiar. Some are experimental. You measure certain things carefully and eyeball others. Maybe you follow a recipe. Maybe experience tells you to make adjustments along the way.

But there’s one thing we haven’t added yet.

Fire.

Without heat, we have a pot full of ingredients. We may have everything necessary to make chili, but we haven’t actually made chili.

Conflict is the fire.

Conflict disturbs the system. It creates stimulation and arousal. It changes what is happening inside the pot. And while our instinct is often to treat that disturbance as evidence that something has gone wrong, the fire is also what allows something to happen at all.

The interesting part begins when we start changing the heat.

Put too little fire underneath the pot and maybe nothing develops. Turn it up and things begin interacting. Turn it up too far and suddenly the chili is sticking to the bottom.

Now we have a problem.

But we also have information.

Why did it burn?

Maybe I used too much heat.

Maybe I didn’t stir it.

Maybe I didn’t follow the directions.

Maybe I chose ingredients that don’t work particularly well together.

Maybe I haven’t properly cared for the pot. I didn’t season it, oil it, maintain it, or use it the way it needed to be used.

And sometimes?

Maybe it’s the pot.

That’s where I think this analogy becomes useful for understanding conflict.

We have a tendency to experience something going wrong and immediately go looking for a culprit. Who did this? Whose fault is it? Who needs to change?

But a burned pot of chili doesn’t answer those questions by itself.

It gives us evidence.

If I keep cooking different recipes in the same pot and everything sticks, that tells me something.

If I use the same recipe successfully in several different pots but it burns in one, that tells me something.

If everything works beautifully at a simmer but falls apart every time I turn the burner to high, that tells me something.

And if I keep burning perfectly good chili because I refuse to stir the damn thing, that tells me something about me.

The point isn’t to remove ourselves from responsibility by blaming the pot. Nor is it to assume every bad outcome must be our fault because we’re the ones doing the cooking.

The point is to investigate.

Sometimes it’s the pot.

Sometimes it’s the ingredients.

Sometimes it’s the amount of heat we poured into it.

Sometimes we simply didn’t follow the directions.

And sometimes several of those things are true at once.

That’s the value of conflict.

Conflict doesn’t necessarily tell us what the answer is.

It creates enough heat for us to start seeing what we’re actually working with.