K9joy^® Education

Communicating with your dog in Dog Language, understanding the reasons for its behavior, developing your own leadership skills, feeding it a natural diet, and caring good care of its health will all help you to become the adored and respected pack leader it deserves you to be!

We have a passion for dogs. We think they deserve to be treated with such respect for their nature that they can enjoy their lives with us in our society, despite the limitations and restrictions we encounter. We believe we can contribute to this by ensuring that the people who truly love them have as much relevant knowledge about their nature and how to deal responsibly with it, as the dogs require. We will do everything we possibly can do get that information out - even if it is controversial and in conflict with the multimillion dollar pet industries and their economic interests. Our primary concern will remain our dogs and the quality of their lives with us.

We want to help you understand your dog - with love and respect for its nature as a domesticated wolf. We want your dog to enjoy its relationship with you - because you take good care of its most fundamental needs, based on a practical understanding of what they truly are.

We want to help you access knowledge resources that are not necessarily rooted in North American tradition and most certainly not related to any commercial "pet industry" interests whatsoever. We object to your being exploited by commercial interests and misinformation - simply because you love your dog and believe you can trust "the professionals".

There are several areas where commercial exploitation is for real. The pet food industry is one screamingly obvious example. Another one not so obvious to most people is the veterinary profession's financial interest in pets not being perfectly healthy. Vets are, unfortunately, primarily earning their income on restoring health, not on preventing disease in the first place. And they are not free to speak their mind, because of their financial dependency of their associations...

But also when it comes to training, the exploitation is severe. The main culprit here is the average dog owner's own laziness or lack of fundamental knowledge. Professional trainers of all kinds are quick to advertise simple "fix-this-problem-here-and-now" solutions that truly are nothing but Band-aids to underlying problems that are completely ignored. This is, unfortunately, a great way of creating more business... When the solution to the first problem is delivered, the trainer just has to wait for the underlying reason to create another problem. Besides, this business approach create a lot of "commercially feasible" solutions that are outright cruel to the dog - but very convenient for the owner.

We believe that many of these professionals are completely unaware of their own insufficiency, as far as the dog's interests are concerned. They are not paid by the dog, but by the owner. And with the owner literally being completely uneducated in the matter, we certainly acknowledge that "selling" the right solution is far from simple - because it is not what the majority of the market wants!

Here are some examples:

• Feeding a dog a biologically appropriate diet takes that people understand what a dog is, biologically. It is not a monkey or a hamster or a miniature four-legged human, so the main diet should consist of what is natural for a carnivore: primarily raw meat, raw bones, and raw organs. Nonetheless, the premanufactured kibble foods contain nothing raw - and 2/3 of them are grain products that should never be fed to a carnivore at all, as far as Nature is concerned! Please see our theme page on feeding for more information on what you should use as your basis for making your decisions on what and how to feed your carnivore companion.

• Taking good care of a dog's health means, first of all, preventing disease and suffering. Filling it with drugs and medications that are completely redundant does not fit this picture.... There is no such thing as "harmless drugs" - all of them have negative side effects. Many of them are outright dangerous. Some of them can be helpful, under certain circumstances. The vast majority of vaccines, for instance, are completely redundant - they are meant to protect against diseases that do not exist in many geographical areas where vets still promote them. Please see our theme page on health care for more information on how you can approach the task of putting a responsible health care plan together for your dog.

• Training is important for the dog's mental well-being. Dogs need to use their instincts. They need to act in the ways Nature programmed their behaviors. And yet, what is taught in general is "obedience training" and "confirmation" - none of which does anything to the dog but restrict it from using its natural instincts and instead forces it to behave like a robot. No wonder that so many people have so many problems with their dogs! Please see our theme page on training for more information on how you need to change your paradigm for training, so it starts out taking into account "what is in it for the dog?".

This is the core of our business. We want dog owners to learn how they can benefit both themselves and their dogs by learning and applying what nature has created for us and let us borrow as a precious gem we call "dogs". We owe it to Nature that we take good care of that responsibility. We owe it to our dogs that we protect them against abuse that all too easily follows the powers we got. And we owe it to ourselves that we do what it takes to discover how much enjoyment we can get ourselevs from being our dog's best friend.

We want this education out to all dog owners, so they understand what their dog is and what it needs in terms of diligent care. We do not accept shortcuts, just because the owner does not bother educating self - or is too ignorant to want to pay the price. We know education takes time, and sometimes money. But so does food, shelter, and medicare. Being a dog owner is not free of charge and it is not free of obligations. We just hope that people will take advantage of all our free information and of our professional assistance to understand their dogs well enough to be able to truly develop a mutually enjoyable relationship with those domesticated wolves.

As everything else in Nature, also this is a matter of balance. Although we adamantly oppose feeding dogs commercial kibble as the main part of their diet, we equally adamantly oppose "whole prey model" fanatics condemning people who once in a while feed their dogs some of their own leftovers. Yes, we oppose yearly multi-vaccinations because it is well documented that they cause far more harm than good, but we do not oppose the concept of vaccination, when applied to diligent purposes of risk management. Similarly, we despise the use of pain and violence in training - but we also do not advocate letting the dog take charge because the owner does not want to use what is necessary to get the important messages across to the dog in an understandable way; and sometimes, this take a bit more than "throwing cotton balls at the dog".

The basic philosophy on our part is that we want the owner to take the appropriate action, not out of obedience to us or any expert, but because this owner is empowered to make diligent and well-informed decisions on behalf of his/her dog.

All dogs are individual, just like people. Any attempt to create a "one-size-fits-all" standard for how exactly to go about caring for our animals is ridiculous in its ignorance of all the variants. There are too many parameters to account for. But there are, fortunately, also a lot of natural laws and rules we can use to make our decision processes simpler. Nobody can do that responsibly, though, except the well-educated owner.

It is our purpose to help people make well-educated dog owners out of themselves. Once that is achieved, we know that the dog is well taken care of - and it will be a joy for the people in its pack.

To us, a dog is far more than "just a pet". If it is to you too, we encourage you to check what we offer!

Cheers and woof,

K9joy^®

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P.S. Maybe you just know of a great web site where dogs are being respected as valuable companions, and not "just pets"? If you do, we would like to link, so please about it!