#and then walks off into the distance

[oifaaa]

I saw some of your two jasons/clone AU and I genuinely thought you were continuing the markiplier joke and now Jason had a clone who Ra’s and Talia just like. plopped fake memories in and set loose idk. and decided to become a youtuber.

Anon please could you not spoil the ending of my clone au that's very rude of you Jeez now I've got to come up with a whole new ending

[qoldenskies]

i think about splinter walking in on the aftermath of caged lungs a lot

[luckykittysshowerthoughts]

Michael trying to court MC but it just has the energy of a curious child poking a Weird Neat Thing He Found in the Bushes with a stick then jumping back when it moves

[abirddogmoment]

I love seeing Rory run in the field!! Bird dog doing bird dog things!! You said in the tags you had different training and priorities with her vs Mav re: offleash running like that. What kinds of things did you do differently with Rory to be comfortable having her offleash at a distance with reliable recall?

I was writing a whole novel but really it boils down to this chart. Under the cut because it's (vertically) long.

In short, it's just as much about what I didn't do with Maverick as what I did do with Aurora.

(Edited to add: I am extremely fortunate to live in the prairies where the kind of visibility I need is easy to find. Use my experience to inspire your own training if you like, but don't use it as a recipe. I have my own goals and my own priorities and those are likely different than yours.)

Maverick:

🔵 Supremely confident from day 1

🔵 Came home in August (extremely good and exciting time for outdoor adventures)

🔵 Prioritized specific sports behaviours over foundational building blocks like engagement and cooperation

🔵 Learned bad habits from my older dog at the time (prey drive > recall)

🔵 Was indiscriminately prey driven. If it moved, he wanted to kill it.

🔵 I phased out treats too fast and didn't want to use an ecollar or long line

🔵 I focused on "social media dog behaviours" (think like walking extremely close to me on trails) and got frustrated when we couldn't meet these rather than meeting my dog where he was at. This created a lot of frustration in our dog adventures.

🔵 I practiced recalls constantly when I didn't have to, making them a tedious behaviour for him. I would recall him 20-50 times a hike for everything from "you're too far away from me" to "I want to take a photo".

Aurora

🟣 Came to me a little insecure and looked to me for reassurance

🟣 Came home in December (a cold and relatively boring time for outdoor adventures)

🟣 I prioritized engagement, cooperation, and name recognition from day 1

🟣 Practiced good habits by walking offleash in the snow either alone or with Pike (amazing recall)

🟣 Is extremely birdy, but is very very focused. She easily calls off deer or people/dogs in the distance because she mostly cares about birds.

🟣 Literally always gets offered a high value snack for recalling or voluntary check ins (I will never phase this out, I will carry chunks of cheese on offleash walks for the rest of her life)

🟣 I never practice recalls if I don't need them. This one is hard to explain, but once Rory understood that long whistle = come back as fast as you can, I don't whistle unless I really need to. I recall her an average of 0-3 times per hike (*based on visibility or wildlife*) and trust her to make good decisions otherwise. I keep my eyeballs on her 100% of the time and choose areas with good visibility, but I don't recall her just for being far away.

🟣 I limit hikes where I have to nag her often (think, in the woods where I dont have a great line of sight and have to remind her to stay close to me) to a few times a month or less so she doesn't start getting frustrated about it.

🟣 I trust the training I put into her and choose to run her in areas with (relatively) reduced risk if she makes the "wrong" choice. I don't nitpick everything she does and I let her make her own choices, within reason.

🟣 I have an interrupter cue to ask her to stop doing something before I call her back (if she's digging a hole and I want her to move on, I use "Rory, enough! Here!") instead of whistling at her.

🟣 I don't force her attention on check ins. If she runs back to me and doesn't want a snack and wants to run straight back out, I let her run back out.

🟣 I have anticipatory cues for the end of a walk so I don't have to recall her when we get to the end of the field.

I want to say that it's nerve wracking to watch my dog sprint at full speed hundreds of yards away from me. I have to fight the impulse to recall her just because she's far away. It's an exercise in trust because I'm always worried about her going over the horizon, or running into a wildlife, or falling into a hole, but it's an important thing to work on if you have a dog that needs that trust to thrive.

Mav and I were a good team, but I never fully trusted him outdoors. I always had my finger on the ecollar buttons ready for him to do an evil and need to be vibrated. It was exhilarating to watch him in the field, but it wasn't really fun or relaxing.

Rory and I built a much stronger foundation of trust (I personally never would have been able to do this if I had more than one dog). She doesn't know any tricks yet, but I'm super confident in her recall and ability to take direction in the field, even when she's sprinting as fast as possible.

[irhabiya]

nile <3

[hp-lonesome-actual-art]

Erhm sorry about the poor lighting quality on this batch. Kinda spur of the moment conjured them up, but the downside is no natural sunlight available due to it being night hours so everything is very yellow tinted. But depending how you look at it this might help enhance the retro old fashioned feel lol

Also gotta include the online photo inspiration for this Leggy & Mr. Puzzles one. Kinda a strange idea but figured it would be comedic enough concept to warrant some art…and perhaps I think it’s just a little bit cute too. In general I just wish they had more bonding screen time together :3

[wickjump]

thinking.about!!! how :( cross sans.. :(( whump……… or at least hurt/comfort…… im frothing at the mouth i need more. he should be tortured i think

[quins-makeshift-menagerie]

What does your Patreon money go towards?

Living

[delicatebluebirdruins]

Mia and Ethan were together longer than her working for the Connection's (if the guidebook is to be believed) and I really think that the Connection's made it explicitly clear to Mia that if Ethan realised anything more than her job being a little bit off then Ethan is dead never mind her actually telling him anything.

And i will bet that a lot of post Baker Incident relationship Mia is still operating under that espcially after them being moved for unknown reasons (beach picture i doubt it was a holiday) to europe for the events of Village. Despite the evidence to the contrary of course like Ethan turning up at the Bakers, most of Village (both Mia and Chris are guilty of that)

[girlthativealwaysbeen]

it's not sinking in that today might be the last day in my house and town for many months to come

[papaya-art-doodads]

Princesses

Based on a request I received!

[danburys]

[andyridgeley]

me everytime i see a photo of andrew ridgeley at the great wall of china

[little-cereal-draws]

Epic the musical au where everything's the same but Polities doesn't have glasses. He still needs them tho so he's just aggressively squinting at everything all the time

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

this past week its just been a constant cycle of *normal normal normal* OH FUCK THE SITE UPDATE IS NEARLY UPON US *has to sit down and breathe*

[ineffabeatlemindpalace]