Honouring a Legacy: Karen Pryor and the Power of Connection in Dog Training

A Reflective Start to 2025

2025… How did that happen!? For my first PACT LUNCH of the new year I wanted to come right out the blocks with a positive, life affirming, dog related slab of goodness for you all. I had all these ideas of practical blogs that would kick us all off and invigorate us or (at the very least) inspire us forward into the cold and, sometimes dreary weather of January. Instead I find myself feeling more… well… reflective.

Remembering Karen Pryor

This reflective mood is down to the sad news that the animal training world has lost one of its shining lights. The sad announcement of the passing of Karen Pryor has been writ large in the dog training world over the last week. There have been many wonderful posts written about her by many people who knew her personally and others who have been inspired and touched by her work in Animal Training and wonderful books. I have fond memories of reading her ground-breaking (and I don’t use that phrase flippantly) book “Don’t Shoot the Dog” three times in a row when I was away on holiday. I’ve NEVER read a book three times in a row but that, should give you some idea of just how important that book was for its time and for me. Also, personally, having a podcast based around dog training books I will forever regret not getting a chance to interview Karen. She had an amazing career, a wonderful way of writing and sending out a HUGE amount of love into the world.

The Power of Connection

The legacy of Karen, and just how successful she was in reaching the minds of animals (humans included), and inspiring us all to do better got me thinking about how to connect with people and get our passion and love for dogs and training out into the world. And while it’s true we can’t all go out and write a seminal book, we can make connections that are just as important  in other ways. Perhaps you run a Dog Training class, write a blog, teach 121 training sessions, post videos of having fun with your dog or just simply engage by listening to people talk about their dog?. All of this may seem like small actions but they (and many other ways we spread our message) are ways of sending out your ideas, your passion and ultimately your love for dogs to the world.

A Collective Force for Good

Our love and passion for dogs can also be activism. In a world where increasingly it seems we are being divided, outraged and pulled apart. Where everything seems designed to isolate us and alienate us from one another, It is standing together that will ultimately give us the power to help change the lives of dogs and humans for the better.

Weaving a Net of Love

My good friend, and fellow director of PACT, Jason sent me a passage he heard in a podcast he was listening to the other day. I wanted to share it with you as I think it encapsulates exactly how I feel about community in the dog training world and how we should move forward in this new year… I think I’ll make this mission of forming a “Net” my resolution this year and a perfect way to honour one of the best of us.

“Love can rear its head against domination and act with force against domination if it is collective. For these are the ties that bind us. These are the ties that hold us.

This is the net we weave with which to catch each other, and it's also the net that we can use to catch a beast as it looms over us. Love is not a single hero shining in the night. Love is the candle burning at every window of every home in a village, creating enough light to shine a home for somebody who perhaps is late, perhaps is missing, perhaps is just trying to find their way.

Love is the hearth of the village hall. Love is the sound of clapping after an orchestra of performance. Love is the sound of laughter tinkling in a family home.

Love is always something done together, for even if it's just you, it's just you sending love out to the world, it touches everything that you do love. You're making a net just by doing that. But love is one of those things that doesn't scale up, it scales out.” - Rachel Donald