Just rejecting violence in dog training is not enough! We also need to articulate what an ethic of nonviolence would mean for daily life with our dogs, our clients’ dogs & everything we do as canine professionals & companions. Violence is not just deliberate physical harm—it also involves a failure to accept the whole subject with their own story, ideas, images, needs, wishes, capacities, pace (Kurtz, 2007, 2015). We know that dogs and humans have remarkably close social and emotional brains so the imperative to accept the whole subject definitely includes dogs. At the center of the nonviolent ethic I am articulating is what I call NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PROCESSING: this foregrounds a dog’s processing of information from the environment in a mode that makes sense to them and with enough time to just “be” with this information rather than feel relentless pressure to “do” something about it. A nonviolent approach also validates a subject’s attempts to manage painful experiences by assuming they are doing the best they can to navigate their world given the levels of stress they are experiencing. Rather than viewing these attempts as “naughty,” “bad” or even “vicious” behavior, a nonviolent framework regards them as creative, if often outdated and sometimes inappropriate, adaptations to life events (Ogden, 2021). I call them “ADAPTIVE SURVIVAL STRATEGIES.” There is so much more to say about living out an ethic of nonviolence with our dogs and I am dedicated to articulating it as fully and completely as possible.

Sponsor:Pet Professional Guild
Speaker(s):DR. LAURA DONALDSON

Contact: Rebekah King
 Email: events@petprofessionalguild.com
 Web: https://petprofessionalguild.com/event-5509559