How I think about structure and clarity in my dog’s life

At the end of summer I did an Instagram story poll and feed post on structure in the dog world and had some really interesting conversations. I thought I’d expand the thoughts into a more comprehensive blog!

Here’s how we personally define the terms “structure” and “clarity”—and why we aim for a life with little of the former but lots of the latter.

First things first: Semantics get really messy really quickly

There’s no way I can productively talk about this—or really any topic at all—without acknowledging messy semantics.

Our past experiences and personal associations mean we interpret language differently. While the dictionary definition of a term might be one thing, we add our own connotations to it… and carry those with us when we have conversations with other people.

That means we can all use the same words to mean varying things. The way I personally define terms like “structure” or “clarity” or even commands like “heel” and “place” might not be the way you do. And that’s okay!

It’s …