Well Meaning But Not Well Doing

August 10, 2025

Left: 2018 Right: 2025

In one month, Reese will be seven. I love that dog so much it’s ridiculous. I loved her from the second I saw her. But even more important is that I like her. This wasn’t always the case. Up until a couple of years ago I really didn’t like her at all. We weren’t friends. And if you had asked her, she would have said the same thing.

Her behaviour was out of hand and I had absolutely no control or influence over it. She was loud, obnoxious, rude and generally unpleasant to be around. I heard the phrase “Well, that’s a beagle for you” more times than I could count and my patience for people who dared to utter it was getting very, very short. Then her behaviour started to veer away from annoying and into scary territory with increasing lunging and barking. I knew something had to change.

Reese and I have come a really long way since those days. I’ve put in the work and it’s paying off. Is she the perfect dog? No. Am I the perfect owner? No. But we are navigating the world together under my leadership instead of the free-for-all nonsense that was happening before. For the most part, she’s calm, has good manners, believes what I’m telling her, she enjoys being around me and I enjoy being around her. So what’s changed? Me. I changed. I unlearned just about everything that I thought was true about dogs and dog ownership and then learned how dogs truly navigate the world, what they are looking for from the human who is supposed to be taking care of them and how to communicate with them in ways they inherently understand. It’s not training. It’s leadership.

I took part in a 90 day dog psychology program called Pack Leader University and it has forever changed my life. I’m not saying that to be dramatic. I’m saying it because it’s true. The teacher, Ridge Vogel, has a saying he uses a lot: Well meaning but not well doing. That perfectly describes the spot I was in when I started the program. I really thought that I was doing the best things for Reese. Now when I look at those things from a dog’s perspective, I was doing things so incredibly wrong. Reese was so confused by my behaviour she was basically ignoring me and trying to fend for herself in a human world she simply couldn’t understand. I encountered a lot of hard truths in the program. And when I say hard truths I don’t mean hard truths about Reese. I mean hard truths about me. About the kind of leader I was or more accurately wasn’t. I’ve had to take a good hard look at myself and make adjustments for the betterment of both of us. And like I said, it’s paying off.

Writing about this experience is surprisingly hard. I could write a book with all that I have to say about it but I know that most people aren’t interested in the minutia or even a thorough account. I could talk about the incidents that exposed the cracks, or the training that I tried, or the failures of using food to curb behaviours, etc., etc., but instead I tried to keep it simple. But if I leave you with a single nugget of wisdom, it’s that you should learn dog psychology. If you have a dog, if you are thinking of getting a dog, like dogs, interact with dogs, have an incredibly well behaved dog, have a behavioural nightmare, then learn dog psychology. Even the basics will take you farther than you ever thought you could go. And if you are serious about learning dog psychology then I cannot recommend Pack Leader University enough. If you’re willing to do the work, the rewards are endless.