đŚ Irresistibull's Storm Surfer BCAT RATI RATM CGCA CGCU TKA "Shark" đŚ Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Born 4/13/2020. âď¸Girls like her were born in a storm. They have lightning in their souls. Thunder in their hearts. And chaos in their bones. đ Main blog @Sunfaeral
In January 2020, I attended Dr. Amy Cook's PLAY WAY seminar at Pasadena Humane Society. The seminar was about "social play" as a tool for rehabilitating reactive/stressed/fearful dogs.
"Social Play" has been defined as something different from playing with toys (tug, fetch, etc.) It is literally "goofing around" with your dog in a way that they like, that makes them happy. Body language responsiveness, movement and timing is everything.
Not only did we get to see some inspiring and entertaining video footage of Amy Cook playing with her dogs, some attendees had also brought their own dogs to play with, while Amy offered coaching.
We saw the Play Way live!
It was an amazing and delightful experience and I couldn't wait to get home to play with my 15 year old Boogie (now passed on) who hadn't been interested in Tug or Fetch in over a year due to his vision loss. The Play Way class was like learning a new language, a new vocabulary to play with my dog.
This infographic cannot possibly do justice to all the material covered in the Play Way seminar, which also focused on play as "therapy". For now, I hope this is enough to pique everyone's interest in the subject and how to be mindful and respectful of our dog's body language and of our own body language in conversations with our dog.
Also read: Whole Dog Journal article on The Play Way
Image description and text under readmore.
Description begins.
[image: Five pairs of dogs showing playful behaviors. From left to right: A dog playbows to another, a dog hipbumps another, a dog chases another dog that is running away, a larger dog rolls on its back, playfully wiggling to a smaller dog, and lastly, two dogs play bitey face.]
The Play Way with Amy Cook PhD. playwaydogs.com
illustrated by Lili Chin doggiedrawings.net
Social Play is an excellent way for a dog to be in a happy state of mind and to be physically relaxed or loosened up. Playing also lets us know if a dog is truly relaxed or concerned about anything, so we can more effectively help them feel better.
Good play is an INVITATION. We invite our dog when they are looking at us, not when they are busy. We don't pressure them, as grabbiness, pushiness, and nagging are a turn-off. Pause and greet again before making a new suggestion. If your dog doesn't take up your suggestion but is still attentive, try something new.
FLIRT! Use SUSPENSE.
Not all play involves touching, but good play will have an element of suspense! Take pauses. Do not rush.
Yes: Start with slower, softer energy.
Yes: Give your dog plenty of room to move around freely.
Yes: Invite, wait, listen to your dog's response (body language)
Yes: Take "no" as an answer. PAUSE. Try something different.
No: Don't make your dog feel trapped or overwhelmed.
No: Don't make your dog wrong.
You want your dog to feel SAFE to open up and play with you.
IF you touch your dog, use the 3-SECOND RULE. Pull back after 3 seconds, staying engaged. Does your dog come back to you?
[Image sequence: Greet: A human claps their hands then says hi and reaches their palms out towards a small dog, which wags its tail. Friendly Pause: The human pauses, kneeling on the ground gently reaching out towards the dog, which stands still, confused. The human leans back, bringing their arms back in. The dog orients to them, thinking: âmaybeâ. Greet Again, New Invitation: The human turns away from the dog, folding down towards the ground and turning their face to look at the dog from over their shoulder. They say, hello! The dog approaches the human. Then, the human taps their fingers along the ground, and the dog playfully investigates, thinking âinterestingâ. Finally, the human leans back up, still kneeling, playfully wiggling their fingers in the air in front of them, and the dog happily play bows.]
With SOCIAL PLAY, the use of toys or food is not essential because you are not teaching your dog how to play. You are playing with your dog and learning what they like!
[Image: A vertical gradient scale goes from a reddish 8 at the top to a yellow 1 down at the bottom. A dash-line box encloses the numbers 5, 4, and 3, and the happy faces of a human and dog.]
Be in your dog's ENERGY RANGE!
What is your dog's energy level?
If your dog is overexcited (eg, 8) slow down to a 6-7.
If your dog is unsure or shy (eg, 2) try 1-3.
Play is a CONVERSATION. Here are some ideas to develop a "play vocabulary" with your dog:
YOU are the PREDATOR!
* Stay on the floor
[Image: Four vertically aligned orange squares showing play moves: 1. âClawâ Hands- Hands outstretched, fingers curled into âclawsâ. 2. Flat Hands- Hand outstretched, fingers pressed flat together, wrist bent back. 3. âBiteyâ hands- A variation on âclawâ hands where the fingers wriggle to âbiteâ. 4. âHARâ mouth- a human with their mouth open in a bitey-face gesture.]
[Image: A series of play interactions between a human and a dog. 1. The human play bows at the dog, kneeling with their arms splayed out onto the floor, saying âIâm gonna getcha!â 2. The human holds claw hands out towards the dog- Suspense! 3. The human gently pushes the dog back on the chest, saying âSilly puppy!â The dog pushes back towards the hand. 4. The human uses bitey hand to gently grab at the dogâs muzzle, and says âBite you!â 5. The human uses a finger to poke the dogâs butt. 6. âHead butt!â The human gets on all fours and butts into the dogâs side with their head. 7. The human uses bitey hand to grab at the dogâs butt. âBite your butt!â]
YOU are the PREY!
[Image: Four vertically aligned orange squares showing play moves: 1. Hiding face- A human hides their face behind their hands. 2. Pulling away- A human on all fours leans away from the action. 3. Piano hands- a human dances their fingers across the floor. 4. Rolling, flopping over- a human rolls onto their back, legs in the air and arms folded into their chest.]
[Image: A series of play interactions between a human and a dog. 1. A human crawls away from a dog on all fours, then peeks over their shoulder at the dog, asking âGonna get me?â. Then, the dog jumps up onto the kneeling human. The human rolls onto their back and celebrates with the dog, âYou got me!â 2. The human kneels, folded forward onto the floor doing piano hands. They say âHelloâ. The dog approaches, and the human hides their face from the dog. Then, the dog fake bites the humanâs cheek, tail wagging. 3. A dog watches curiously as a human shakes out a blanket. The human then hides under the blanket and the dog climbs up onto them, thinking âYou silly! I get you!â]
How is your dog responding?
[Image: a human kneels on the floor and watches as the dog walks away from them. It thinks âneed to look.â]
If your dog disconnects from you and looks towards something more interesting or concerning (that is not too close), let them process the other thing. Don't pressure them to come back to you.
When you let your dog look and dismiss the other thing on their own, the more of their attention that you really have when you get it!
NOPE. You are being WEIRD.
[Image: four examples of a dog showing stress. 1. Look Away: A dog turns and looks away. 2. Shake off- A dog shakes off like theyâre wet. 3. Stress yawn- A dog yawns. 4. Busy Sniffing- a dog sniffs the ground.]
At first you may get a lot of "Not Now"s. If your dog shows confused signals or becomes busy doing other stuff, hold back. (Especially with the âshy" dogs) Your dog may not understand what you are doing.
When they approach you again, check your energy level, greet again, and try something different.
[Image: A human wiggles their fingers at a dog, which play bows with an open mouth and says âBite you!â. Another drawing of the dog play bowing facing forwards and panting, tail wagging.]
When you do something that your dog likes, they will keep coming back to you. Their bodies are loose and curved. They may roll around, jump on you, or fake-bite you. They may even laugh!
Now that you know what your dog likes, you can do it over and over again!
Hi. So whats the general vibe nowadays with social media choices? For less intrusive ads, for better privacy, for ideally zero AI. Everything wants access to who I am and my contacts list and my Google profile (which I hate even having that and never connect it to things).
Where are my art and dog friends at? Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed?
I find myself wanting to post some things again but hating the platforms and the culture. Tumblr seems like the only place I can trust to have the feeling I want but posting on mobile often causes it to eat my post if it's too long or has too many pictures.
You know, I donât really get a lot of clinical exposure to pepper spray in Australia, only encountered it on a dog once, but it is handy to know how our human counterparts recommend decontaminating it.
I don't usually add on to stuff like this, but this is really really important to me.
Since OP didn't explain what's actually changing (lots of things) here's a simple explanation of one of the Big Ones.
One of the biggest changes is a proposal to remove the ESAâs Threatened Species Blanket Rule (FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029). The Blanket Rule is extremely important because it automatically extends the same protections given to endangered species to all newly listed threatened species, quickly providing prohibitions on harming, killing or trading the species. If the Blanket Rule is rescinded, species-specific rules would have to be enacted, imposing additional procedural delays and uncertainty at the most critical time for the species' survival. And with more and more species in danger each year, thatâs a risk that we as a country cannot afford to take.Â
Also, @why-animals-do-the-thing / @animalphotorefs this seems like something that your reach might help with, and that's relevant to your blog(s).
If you run into issues, try turning off your VPN if you have one, in case it's getting annoyed that you're not "in the U.S.".
If you need a template, I'm putting one I got sent at work under the cut. (But check out the Oregon Zoo link, too! Or better yet, write your own! Unique and individual comments catch more attention than copy-pasted ones!)
"For over fifty years, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has played a major role in protecting wildlife, preventing nearly 99% of listed species from becoming extinct. This legislation has had support across the country since 1973 because safeguarding Americaâs wildlife is not only a responsibility, but a proud part of our nationâs history.
The proposed change to remove the ESAâs Blanket 4(d) Rule will result in fewer protections for threatened species and compromise the ESAâs mission. It is imperative to maintain our commitment to protecting endangered species and their habitats.
I encourage the Administration to withdraw all proposed changes to the ESA in order to ensure our countryâs wildlife will continue to be protected for generations to come."
Thanks for the tag, I definitely want to jump in here because the most helpful thing any individual can do is write your own comment.
Iâm going to give you a little bit of information about the process thatâs happening here, why itâs happening, and how you can best contribute to protecting the Endangered Species Act. You can skip it by scrolling to the red text, but youâll be best set up to comment and help if you know some things about whatâs happening first, so please stick with me. I promise to be as simple and jargon free as possible.
First, and to catch people's attention as they scroll, here's two red wolf sisters: a species the ESA actively preserving. This is who we're doing this for.
To clarify one thing: theyâre not trying to totally repeal the ESA, the entire law, theyâre looking to roll back regulations implementing it/enforcing it to what was being used in 2019. This is still bad! Very bad! But a thing thatâs important when dealing with legislation/regulation is precision in the language we use.
Okay, so hereâs what you need to know. This is part of what is known as the ânotice-and-commentâ rule making process, which is federally mandated. This happens with the implementation of regulations to enact new laws, or changes to the interpretation of laws. Laws like the ESA, once passed, are delegated to various federal agencies and departments to enact and make happen, and they do that by deciding what regulations need to exist to fulfill the text and intent of the law. This change to the ESA is happening because one of the earliest executive orders from this administration âdirected all departments and agencies to immediately review agency actions to identify those actions that potentially impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources, and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider suspending, revising, or rescinding agency actions identified as unduly burdensome that conflict with this national objective.â So, as @sweetfirebird said, literally go figure out what laws and regs and protections they can interpret differently, put on hold, or trash for the energy sector. Fucking gross.
This ânotice-and-commentâ process is the process with which all these federal agencies go about exploring changing regulations. Itâs a formal process that is specifically designed to allow stakeholders to have input on what happens. Good news: in the ESA, the public is literally a stakeholder! Itâs written into the law that any âpersonâ (basically an individual or a group of individuals) can sue the government for a violation of the law. This is actually historically the prime enforcement mechanism of the ESA. Which means you, as an American on tumblr reading this, have absolutely valid standing to go tell the feds to knock this shit off. And with the way the ânotice-and-commentâ process works, they actually have to take your argument into account. (Yes, even though we know this admin is a piece of shit and dgaf). Hereâs why.
A ânotice and commentâ process has four major steps.
Agency issues a notice of proposed rulemaking. Thatâs what youâre looking at in the first link @sweetbirdfire shared. They have to describe what the rule they want to make/change is and explain the legal authority for the rule.
The public must be given an opportunity to participate in a written comment period. Thatâs what youâre being asked to do - submit a comment before the comment period is over on the 22nd.
The agency must âconsider all relevant, timely-submitted comments. If it decides to issue a final rule, the agency develops the regulatory text along with a preamble explaining the ruleâs basis and responding to all significant issues raised in the comments.â
Final rule is published.
Okay, so why did I jump to a direct quote from federal documents in the third bullet point? Because thatâs the really important shit. When federal agencies move forward with rulemaking after a public comment period, they are required to consider and response to all significant issues raised. And that is why you should write your own comment if you can.
Itâs really common for organizations encouraging people to leave public comment to ask people to send in form letters. Itâs easy, it takes no time or real work, it shows a lot of general public support on the issue, and they can quote the comment numbers when theyâre lobbying.
But! What Iâve been told by serious professional people who work with regulatory agencies is that all those form letters only have the functional weight of a single comment during the ânotice-and-commentâ process. If 100 people only bring up the same significant set of issues, that requires far less time and work for the agency to respond to than even 20 people writing in with their individual concerns. Iâve seen follow-ups on comment periods where they actually count how many people raised issues on a single topic or concern - but the form letters only counted as one âcommentâ because they were the exact same thing.
And while the political agency head probably wants to fast-track this process of changing the regs to let the feds tear up whatever the fuck they want, a ânotice-and-comment periodâ is a really good way to gum up those gears. There are still people in lower-level positions who do this daily work and I expect that theyâre opposed to this and will go through the whole process like theyâre been trained to. Under normal administrations, an overwhelming number of concerns raised during comment periods have stalled the creation/change of specific regulations for a decade. This is a process that works best when as many people as possible participate, and itâs detrimental to our interests as invested members of the public that that isnât more widely known or the process understood.
So! What does that mean you should do here?
Write your own comment if you have the time/spoons.
Literally, write it in your own words, rather than using the form letters provided. If you make it a âdifferent commentâ it has to be considered separately and your concerns on the topic will be given more weight. Even if you just stick to the topics the Oregon Zoo offered: to be clear, theyâre really good ones.
But, youâll have even more impact if you can tie it to specific concerns for you. It takes a little more work so I donât expect everyone to do this, but if you have some specialized or local knowledge that can be relevant, this is a great time to drop that in. Tie the concern to endangered or threatened species in your specific community, or an ecosystem that you know companies might want to pillage.
Your comment doesnât have to be super well written or perfectly edited. It can be in language about as casual as youâd use in a tumblr post (with punctuation, though). This isnât something youâre turning in for a grade - itâs raising your hand to say hey, I object! Youâre not a major advocacy group or professional org, you donât have to be perfect, you just have to tell them how you feel. That being said. Public comments are public record. You can submit them anonymously but donât include identifying information.
Hereâs a link directly to the comment portal. While the site has a text box embedded in the page, you can also submit a document/file containing your comment.
Comments close at 11:59 PM EST (4:59 GMT) on December 22nd. We have less than five days to get more comments in. Iâm really not kidding when I say every unique, individual comment makes an impact. Letâs do this.
Found a guide from protectdemocracy.org on how to write an effective public comment (these images are edited slightly for readability; go to the actual guide for more resources):
Public comments are not a voting process and simply expressing disagreement is not effective.
I personally disagree that you should write as informally you would a tumblr post. I would not trust that the regulators reading these comments have such principles about the importance of listening to people's concerns regardless of how informal or uneducated they sound.
Honestly, I would treat this as you would a graded assignment, because they are not obligation make any decisions simply because people comment that they don't want a rule made. You need to convince them that there are significant concerns, and you should be imagining the person you are convincing is an old white cis male politician who regularly complains that kids these days don't know cursive. That is the kind of person likely deciding if your comment is relevant to the regulation and brings up significant enough concerns.
But you could write out your thoughts in informal language, and then use Grammarly or something similar to help polish it into a more formal comment. Following the suggestions in that guide should help give you a basic structure for what your comment should look like.
Unique comments are most effective; copy-pasted ones are not. This is a process which requires intellectual labor and there's no getting around that, but there's nothing wrong with getting help.
I framed it as âthis doesnât have to be a graded assignmentâ because I didnât want it to sound super formal and hard after going into a ton of detailed federal processes. It doesnât have to be scary was really my point. Like, Iâve read a lot of federal comments for various zoo-related laws, and Iâve seen some of the stakeholders submit pretty casual comments. Is it ideal? Not really. But I know everyone is stressed as hell all the time these days and the idea of doing a bunch of intellectual labor on a foreign topic with real world consequences can be really intimidating.
@genderkoolaid provided some great resources on writing a good comment, and I really like the idea of using online (non-genAI) services to get help with polishing. If you have the labor to put into a really polished comment, so that. But if something more informal is all you can do, do that instead of nothing.
my dog came and got me while I was getting ready for work this morning, and she was signaling that it was Very Urgent. I followed her downstairs thinking something was wrong with my senior dog or my partner but the minute my foot hit the bottom step my partner loudly asked "Did she come get you, too?"
"She did, what's wrong?"
"She wants you to look at the frog."
"...The frog?"
"Yeah. The frog."
"There's a frog?"
"on the window, yeah"
so she was standing in the corner staring at me VERY expectantly and somewhat impatiently, so I walked over and she immediately turned her attention back to the window and sure enough. very high up. and very small. there was a frog.
keep in mind that bigfoot himself could be in the yard outside and this dog Would Not Care. but god forbid a frog catches a vibe on the window I guess. anyway. glad my dog deemed this worthy of my attention
Very smart doggo knew that OP would get the word out to the public about frog. Now thousands more people know about frog. Objectively an incredibly successful Very Urgent Alert. What a good girl!!
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