Moxie Mutts

10/15/2026

Best clients ever ❤️🩵❤️ 🐾

10/15/2026

Happy Birthday Luna !!! 🎉🎊 One of the OG’s - you’re the best of the best (not to mention a mighty Echo Protector!). We love you to the moon and back! 🌖❤️🩵

10/12/2026

When a ball thrower enters the park, there will be a few people taking cover. Dogs racing after something at speed can cause fear, trigger prey drive and create frustration.

It’s always a good idea to throw mindfully, and well away from others.

10/06/2026

10/05/2026

The physics of a prong collar is simple, but it is often explained badly. A common claim is that because the prongs sit around the neck, they “spread pressure evenly”. Mechanically, that does not follow.

Force and pressure are not the same thing. Pressure depends on the force applied and the area over which it is delivered:

Pressure = Force ÷ Area.

A prong collar may spread the load through several links, but each link contacts the neck over a relatively small area. Several contact points do not automatically mean low pressure or prove that every point carries the same load.

A dog’s neck is not a perfect cylinder and the collar is not pulled equally from every direction. The leash pulls from one point and at changing angles. Movement, fit, friction, neck shape and tissue deformation alter where the load goes. Even flat collars do not produce uniform pressure on a moving dog.

This is why balloon demonstrations tell us little. A balloon is a thin, hollow, elastic membrane filled with air. A dog’s neck is a living structure made of skin, fat, fascia, muscle, blood vessels, nerves and the airway. It responds to force very differently.
So if a prong collar does not burst a balloon, that does not show that pressure on a dog’s neck is low or harmless (otherwise it would be an ineffective training tool). Equally, bursting a balloon would not prove that a prong collar injures a dog. It is the wrong physical model.

We also do not currently have good pressure mapping studies showing exactly what happens beneath individual prongs on living dogs. So science does not support claims that we know the pressure is “evenly distributed”.
What we can say is: Prongs positioned around the neck ≠ evenly distributed pressure.

There is also no evidence that dogs interpret a prong collar as a maternal correction. It's an appealing analogy. It isn't an experimentally demonstrated behavioural mechanism.

Reduced pulling does not prove that a collar is painless either. A dog may change behaviour because it learns how to reduce or avoid the pressure. That does not necessarily mean severe pain, but the sensation has to matter enough to alter behaviour.

09/27/2026

HUMAN DIRECTED AGGRESSION AND THE USE OF AVERSIVES

I’ve had several dogs come to me in the last year who have aggression issues around people that either started or became much worse after they’d had aversive training. By aversives we mean the use of slip lead corrections, body jabs, rattle cans, prong and Ecollars etc. Some dogs went for general loose lead/recall/obedience training but became so scared after the use of aversives that they are now lunging at or even biting people who approach them or try to handle them. Some were already worried about people (growling or barking etc) and are now lunging or attempting to bite people. Some have bitten their owners since this training.

These dogs didn’t have these issues beforehand and they’ve become so scared of what people may do to them now that they are showing aggression. Some of them are now misinterpreting normal human interactions with them and see people as a threat to their safety and are using aggression to try and keep people away. By normal human interactions I mean people taking collars and leads off, reaching out to touch them, walking past then when they are resting etc. These dogs are traumatised by what’s happened to them, there is no other way of describing it.

I used to see dogs like this (who’ve shown aggression after aversive training) once or twice a year and now it’s something I see several times a month and it’s really concerning. There are some really unskilled trainers out there using aversives which is extremely worrying; if an unskilled trainer gets it wrong using reward the worse that happens is the dog gets fat, if you are an unskilled trainer using a shock collar there’s a huge risk of fallout.

Aversives are sold as a ‘quick fix’ they make dogs stop behaviours that people don’t like (running off/barking/stealing things) but there is always a huge risk of a fall out. It’s no surprise really that doing or using something that causes fear or pain may make an anxious dog worse.

None of this is the owners fault either, all have incredibly kind and loving families who weren’t aware these methods would be used or who didn’t realise the implications. They’ve done nothing wrong and are now left to try and repair the damage that’s been done. I feel so sad for the lovely families and their dogs as they’ve been really let down.

There’s no quick fixes to changing emotions, it takes time and patience and who often we are trying to rebuild confidence that’s been lost and help dogs recover from previous trauma (of all sorts). There’s a huge risk with quick fixes and it’s like playing roulette- you may have an incredibly robust dog and get ‘lucky’ and have no negative consequences from using aversives but it may break another dog and leave you with a terrible fall out. Just not worth the risk when we have alternatives

Laura McAuliffe, 2025, Dog Communication

08/26/2026

Dolly Parton’s life was full of philanthropy, especially when it came to animal conservation and rescue efforts. Dolly loved animals; her impact and legacy will remain through these programs she so loved.

The Eagle Mountain Sanctuary at Dollywood was a project with the American Eagle Foundation to oversee and educate people on bald eagle conservation. This project has helped the many efforts to recover bald eagle populations and get them removed from the endangered species list.

The Doggy Parton clothing and accessory brand donates portions of its funds to Willa B. Farms, a non-profit rescue from Old Hickory, Tennessee.

She also wrote several children’s books about her god-dog, Billy The Kid.

Dolly Parton will be deeply missed by her community, and all other communities she touched with her outreach efforts to help both people and animals alike.
Rest in peace, Dolly. 🕊️❤️

07/16/2026

Please… train your kids

06/19/2026

An oldie, but still one of my favorites!

❤️🐾🐾