The Teachings of Sisco Miyagi

Not a dog trainer’s take on the ‘Trainer Wars’

Posted on 22/09/2024
/Under Animal Behaviour, Culture, Pet ownerships

If you are in any way involved in or exposed to the world of dog training, you are no doubt aware of the current escalation in the ‘Trainer Wars’. I can’t escape these discussions at the moment, so I decided to dust off the old blog and share my thoughts,...Read more

‘Outside of the shelter, she’s just a dog’

Posted on 09/07/2022
/Under Animal Behaviour, Culture, Sheltering

To anyone outside of the world of shelter behaviour, the words ‘Outside of the shelter, they are just a normal dog’ probably cause a moment’s thought and not much more. For those of us in sheltering though, that simple phrase sums up one of our biggest challenges – how do...Read more

Superheroes are an amorphous bunch, and it’s about time we defined ourselves

Posted on 26/06/2022
/Under Animal Management, Culture, Sheltering, Uncategorized

Heads up for today’s blog. While I am going to do my best to make it useful and hopefully entertaining, my aim is to get you thinking about what you know and don’t know about some of words and labels we use in our sector, when talking about each other....Read more

Making friends with our enemies and challenging culture

Posted on 10/04/2022
/Under Behaviour change, Culture, Sheltering

“Like Norm, I too am a passionate believer that every person who works within our sector has a unique and potentially very powerful opportunity to change our world for the better. Through experience, I’m also acutely aware of the challenges and stresses inherent to jobs in our sector, and how...Read more

Love the dog you’re with

Posted on 30/04/2021
/Under Animal Behaviour, Pet ownerships

It’s been a while since I’ve posted and I’ve been trying (and failing!) to find my writing mojo. One of my goals when starting the blog was to write a series of ‘Sisco’s lessons for life’ posts and lately I’ve been reminded often of one of his best lessons for...Read more

Dear Foster Carer… Thank you for loving them

Posted on 08/01/2021
/Under Animal Behaviour, Sheltering, Staff and volunteers

Dear Foster Carer, I’m reaching out to you in writing because this is a hard conversation to have in person, and I know I’m probably the last person you want to talk to right now anyway. You see, today we said a permanent goodbye to an animal that we both...Read more

‘Test’ vs ‘Assessment’: Words matter, and that bathwater is looking dirty enough to lose a baby!

Posted on 04/12/2020
/Under Animal Behaviour, Sheltering, Uncategorized

Back in 2017 I was sitting in the audience of Mykel Smith’s presentation at the Australian Institute of Animal Management yearly conference ‘Recruiting: Are we getting the most suitable candidate?’. He spoke about staff recruitment, focusing on the difference in an organisations ability to select high-quality candidates using traditional Q&A...Read more

A little more on greyhounds, including what ‘Stompy-stomp circle work’ is…

Posted on 20/11/2020
/Under Uncategorized

Following on from my last post about greyhounds, I’ve had several people ask me about what greys are actually like as dogs. Contrary to concerns about public perceptions of greyhounds as athletes, no one thought that greyhounds have kelpie levels of energy, so we’re probably past the days of the...Read more

Greyhounds – No, they aren’t all 70km/hr couch potatoes and that’s cool!

Posted on 06/11/2020
/Under Uncategorized

This week, I came across a picture of a previous foster dog while I was hunting for some pictures and videos for presentation. Her name was Shelby and she was a greyhound that wiggled her way into the hearts of pretty much everybody she met. Shelby’s picture got me thinking...Read more

Learning on the fly, work-life boundaries, podcasts, and my daily commute

Posted on 30/10/2020
/Under Animal Behaviour, Education

Inspired by the high quality of listening material during my recent commutes to work and some advice from a friend to try writing about something a little lighter, I thought this week it might be fun to share some great and easy to access resources for animal welfare and management...Read more

Pet Adoption – stacking the odds of success!

Posted on 23/10/2020
/Under Animal Behaviour, Education, Pet ownerships, Sheltering

This week’s Sisco Miyagi post is a little belated. I went into last week with full intentions of staying on track with my weekly posts, then a few long days at work coincided with the 2nd anniversary of Sisco’s passing and I chose to curl up on my recliner covered...Read more

How much suffering is hope worth?

Posted on 09/10/2020
/Under Uncategorized

“I feel like I spend half my life telling rehomers that X behaviour is not a legitimate reason for killing a pet, and the other half telling rehomers that they absolutely should not be placing the animal in question as a pet” If I had a $5 for every time...Read more

Making the Impossible Choice…

Posted on 02/10/2020
/Under Animal Behaviour, Pet ownerships

To say that 2020 has been a weird year is an obvious understatement. However, it’s the best I can come up with to describe the duality of extreme lows and brilliant highs of human nature that have punctuated the last 10 months. I’m not sure whether it’s due to the...Read more

Vollie, Vollie, Vollie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Posted on 25/09/2020
/Under Animal Management, Sheltering, Staff and volunteers

I had planned on waiting until Volunteer Week to sit down and put my thoughts ‘on paper’ in this space. That was until I realised that Vollie Week is in May and it’s September, so it would be a while before I put ‘pen to paper’. Given that my main...Read more

Open Adoptions – compromise or the start of a beautiful friendship?

Posted on 18/09/2020
/Under Culture, Sheltering

Today’s post is a bit of a confession. I took a really, really, long time to fully appreciate the concept of Open Adoptions and how or why we need to embrace this idea in Australia. By the time the ‘Adopters Welcome’ program had filtered to us in Aus, I was...Read more

Ground crew to Mission Control: Where the bloody hell are we?

Posted on 11/09/2020
/Under Uncategorized

Those who know me will not be shocked to learn that I watched ‘We Bought A Zoo’ for the first time in 2020, despite its release almost a decade ago (I’m obviously not a movie buff!). While watching and thoroughly enjoying the movie, I couldn’t help but notice some striking...Read more

Companion animal welfare and management people, we need to stop modelling our identities on Superheroes

Posted on 28/08/2020
/Under Animal Management, Culture, Sheltering

Clarke Kent – Lois Lane – Superman Peter Parker – Mary Jane – Spiderman Bruce Wayne/Batman – Selina Kyle/Catwoman It’s a trope that has been around for as long as superhero comics themselves – Superhero leads double life to protect their human identity and loved ones. Lowly human identity falls...Read more

What’s The Go with RPO?

Posted on 24/08/2020
/Under Animal Management, Behaviour change, Education

Aussies love slogans. It’s an indisputable fact that if something is able to be chanted at the football or cricket, it will burn it’s way in to the public psyche and resist all attempts to remove it, no matter how silly, useless or downright dangerous the concept behind the slogan...Read more

Betty and Charlie – the hidden costs of expensive consolation prizes

Posted on 18/08/2020
/Under Culture, Education, Sheltering

This is the first post of Sisco Miyagi so I’m a bit excited and a bit anxious about how this is all going to go. If you want to know more about me, or why this blog is named after a kelpie and a movie character, head to the ‘About...Read more

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