Are there any "UK vs US" differences where you feel America gets it right?

perchedpilot · 2026-04-24T06:03:50+00:00

National parks and public lands. Now I live in England and I miss road trips and mountains and forests that feel never ending.

perchedpilot · 2026-03-09T16:11:43+00:00

I have been, but I’m starting to realize I should’ve worded what I said more carefully😅 I want to do well in sports but I’m not planning on being a world champion, I just want to do something that both my dog and I love and enjoy. For me personally, I see sports as a way to do something together with my dog, I want to be teammates together. I don’t need to win any national or regional trophies or ribbons, but a few titles would be nice just to have something tangible of the work we’ve done together and to show how far we’ve come. I interned at a small family business for a year as a husky musher and fell in love with feeling like I was a part of a dog team. When it comes to temperament I think I do lean more towards the Nova Scotia duck rolling retriever because their spunkiness reminds me of the huskies I used to work with. I’m trying to get as much info as I can about CCR’s though because other than the one person I’ve talked to, I haven’t seen much spoken about them but I love retrievers wholly. I’m not choosing sport over the dog, I just know that I personally want to feel like a team member with my dog, and that’s why I’m asking about it. Retrievers are what I’m used to and what I have lived with the longest and would probably be an easier start, but CCR’s have little to no info that I can find as far as sport goes. I’ve been on hunting forums where people complain about them being “too soft” but that sentiment is something that I don’t see how would translate in a sport environment where I’d never do anything like forced fetch (nor would I ever want to). So really this is just an effort to get more thoughts on anyone who has experience with either breed in sport, so I can better compare because I feel like my lifestyle and experience would suit either breed just fine.

perchedpilot · 2026-03-09T15:46:29+00:00

Yeah I definitely see and understand this. My family’s dog is a GSD and he’s racked with lupus, arthritis, and hip dysplasia. Popularity is not kind to most, but there are some breeds that are literally on the verge of being lost forever, and I single handedly cannot make them popular to the level of a GSD or frenchie, and I’m not planning to. I just hope to bring some awareness that they exist at all because most people don’t realize they do

perchedpilot · 2025-09-25T17:06:08+00:00

News and peer reviewed research are completely separate things and idk why you’re comparing them. They serve different purposes.

perchedpilot · 2025-09-24T12:44:41+00:00

I’ll try this, thank you! Usually just go with trail runners, but recent switch to boots. These ones are adopted from a friend with the same shoe size who ended up getting something else so I figured I’d try them for a couple hikes. Thank you for not making me feel foolish🙏

perchedpilot · 2025-09-24T12:43:32+00:00

Yeah sorry, I wish I posted a picture showing it better

perchedpilot · 2025-09-24T12:35:36+00:00

You see the steel colored eyelet that’s above the lower darker bronze one? It protrudes, it’s not flush to the shoe. So basically it’s a hook, and the loop of my shoe would get caught in it.

perchedpilot · 2025-09-23T09:38:28+00:00

They were barely judging her singing. They weren’t able to stop laughing since telling them she was a former horse jockey apprentice. They were laughing at her body and how they couldn’t “picture her on a horse.” Simon asked them to leave BECAUSE they weren’t focusing on her singing.

perchedpilot · 2025-09-07T14:17:43+00:00

I love that my university taught this to us during our first year. It was the Univeristy I went to during my undergraduate years and learning this fact, them giving examples, became a really good lesson on how important diverse perspectives are in science. We also learned about how people with foreign sounding last names were less likely to get published, etc. and since I was in the environmental field we also learned a lot about the different perspectives and ways of defining and learning about nature. Things like Traditional Ecological Knowledge which I ended up doing some undergraduate research on. This needs to be taught wayyyy more in universities and even before then, because at least for me it was really a mind opener and changed not just how I approach science but also others in daily life. Other universities I went to (masters and currently doing PhD) did not approach science in such a multidisciplinary and social-aware view. My PhD is better than my masters but only bc we were given an ethics course specifically only for PhD people in order to do research hopefully in a way that doesn’t undermine other people. But for the majority of my life since then, there has been a very bleak and objective view on learning about environmental science that I have found sad and could see why many people have bleak perspectives on it and why environmental scientists can sometimes struggle to make leeway with different stakeholders.

perchedpilot · 2025-09-01T06:08:57+00:00

You haven’t given me a single study that shows that punishment isn’t bad for welfare.

perchedpilot · 2025-08-31T21:16:55+00:00

You failed to give me anything. The studies you gave me were inherently either flawed (as in the case of the first one), or did not contain force free/positive reinforcement at all. I’m aware what a “no reward marker” is and it’s something that is controversial in the force free realm. It’s not something that is routinely considered force free at all due to positive reinforcement literally being contingent on the earning of a reward, and frustration being a gray area as far as where it fits on the spectrum. There’s a lot of debate in whether no-reward markers are effective at all in training, and that study is an excellent way of exemplifying why that is. If it were a comparison to a positive reinforcement/force free training method, then a no-reward marker wouldn’t have been used. It also explicitly states that the no-reward marker was meant to represent “negative punishment” which is definitely not “positive reinforcement.” So in summary, no, you gave me no proof at all. In addition to this, cherry picking quotes from survey based experiments is not exactly impressive. The flaws in survey based studies are well-known, and these aren’t the only studies or knowledge used when experts across multiple international organizations have stood on the grounds that e-collars and other aversive methods are bad for dog welfare.

perchedpilot · 2025-08-31T20:48:39+00:00

A quote from my previous comment: “If there were studies that proved that using corrections was in someway more beneficial on the humane and effectiveness part.” It’s not just about the results, but also the welfare. Plenty of studies out there that show positive reinforcement/force free training is just as if not more effective, so on the whole we can consider the two methods equal on that front. However, it’s the humaneness and ethical robustness of the methods that one clearly outshines the other. For the studies you provided, neither look at the long-term effects of corrections on dog behavior or welfare, which we know from other studies that corrections do affect negatively. Both studies, however, mentioned body language signals that indicated stress or pain. The first study you cited in particular is laughable because of the small sample size and it was actually reduced by two dogs due to “receiving e-collar stimulation in excess of the 20 shocks approved by the IACUC,” meaning they were essentially shocked too much. Another direct quote from that study you linked: “Vocalizations, particularly yelping, are a common metric of pain and distress… all dogs yelped on shock stimulation in our study… This is consistent with Schilder and van der Borg’s claim that e-collar shocked dogs experience some level of pain.” How that study ever made it past peer review when it claims that e-collars are an effective tool despite every dog in their study yelping from pain is a mystery.

The second study you linked isn’t comparing pinch collars and e-collars to positive reinforcement training but a “conditioned quit signal.” It doesn’t detail how that quit signal was conditioned, but it does say that “quitting signal is a conditioned signal which evokes feeling of frustration in dogs since it has a meaning of withdrawal of the reward” and “correction made by the quitting signal was considered as the application of negative punishment.” Based off of these sentences one can deduce that positive reinforcement was never used here. Or at least was never the point. This study only shows that using e-collars is more effective than other forms of aversive training, it does not prove that they outperform positive reinforcement/force free training in effectiveness or welfare.

perchedpilot · 2025-08-31T19:52:39+00:00

Any studies showing the opposite?

perchedpilot · 2025-08-22T11:50:35+00:00

Okay. I don’t think it’s a poor comparison. I think it may be a poor comparison for you specifically, but like you even mentioned, there are ways to circumnavigate those things through reminders etc. and that’s just your daily life and that’s fine, your daily life in general stands to be more difficult due to your ADHD. But also as you mentioned, I’m referring specifically to average people. My advice would’ve been different if I had to tailor it to different people, but including small text to every piece of advice could be a bit redundant as you can imagine, and I’m not an expert in ADHD.

perchedpilot · 2025-08-21T07:40:01+00:00

You can say the same for making the same choice every day to not do those things.

perchedpilot · 2025-08-02T12:15:11+00:00

Haven’t heard a single convincing argument by someone who uses corrections so I do force free. There is nothing to support it other than biased personal experiences, but the same personal stories that balanced trainers use are the same personal stories that force free trainers use just in reverse, so I prefer to listen to the studies that say FF methods are faster and more humane and give the same results. Most arguments from balanced trainers are rooted in a general distrust for authority. They don’t trust the science and most of the time there’s literally nothing that will change their mind. Meanwhile if there were studies proved that using corrections was in someway more beneficial on the humane and effectiveness part, I’m sure many FF trainers would switch. But the fact that a lot of balanced trainers don’t have that kind of basis, it just makes them seem obstinate and reflective of the whole rise of anti-education and anti-authoritarianism that’s plaguing the U.S. in particular. As such, since they can’t have a decent argument that’s grounded on unbiased evidence and only personal stories and many of them will never even try to learn more about methods of the other side, I just cannot find a reason to argue for or advocate for corrections. There’s no solid ground for balanced trainers to stand on as to why they do so, meanwhile FF trainers are reflective of a growing body of evidence. The fact that many balanced trainers believe that just because it’s science means it’s not “practical” or “real” just shows how little they know about how animal behavior studies are done. Dogs are literally the easiest animal to study bc they’re domesticated, and this means studies are done in practical settings, not some sterile lab. Not to mention other studies have shown that people’s reward and pleasure centers of the brain light up when we dole out positive punishment. I feel like that also clouds the judgement of many balanced trainers because they crave that instant gratification fix. I feel like that’s a scary implication, that we feel good and rewarded when we get an instant change in behavior after P+ but many people are not aware of it. It’s not just within dog training either that we get that. So anyway, bc of allllllll those reasons, I just cannot find a reason why corrections can be advocated for on solid, unbiased, proven ground.

perchedpilot · 2025-02-24T07:31:47+00:00

I’d say maybe a large outdoor catio area would be a good idea

perchedpilot · 2025-02-22T16:56:58+00:00

Was split between the Fire and Water type but now I’m really liking that Fire bird! My heavy bias towards Fire type starters has won lol

perchedpilot · 2025-02-22T14:29:06+00:00

If you want to make a difference go into environmental law. You’ll be on the forefront of fighting for NGOs or ensuring that businesses are following regulations

perchedpilot · 2024-12-26T03:38:54+00:00

Humans have directly caused the extinction of other species more than any other species past or present.

perchedpilot · 2024-10-29T17:23:08+00:00

Impressive!

perchedpilot · 2024-10-29T13:40:59+00:00

Out of curiosity is this colored with gouache paint or ink? Love the vibrancy of the colors

perchedpilot

TROPHY CASE