Animal Behaviour | 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

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

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

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