Wonder Paws Dog Adventure Park

23/10/2023

Bravo 👏🏻

23/10/2023

22/10/2023

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Many of us may have experienced learning and education that has been stressful, aversive, and even ableist too.⁣
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While we may have survived stressful and aversive education in the past, it doesn’t mean that that’s the only way.

It doesn’t mean that learning has to be stressful and anxiety-inducing.

And it definitely doesn’t mean we should impose it on our dogs who are truly doing their best in our world.⁣
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Learning being stressful and aversive can lead to our dogs giving up and losing motivation, as well as negatively impacting their overall wellbeing. I know that many of us may still be negatively impacted by aversive experiences during our education even though it happened years ago. So why would we want our dogs to go through that?

Even though aversive and stressful situations may be inevitable at times, we can consciously work on reducing stress for our dogs by managing the environment, providing them decompression time, having more fun with them, and by being better teachers for them while also learning from them.⁣

Yes, learning from our dogs too! When we can view working with our dogs as a two-way communication where we listen to each other rather than us just telling them what to do, we can understand each other better, and we can discover what our dog needs from us to be able to learn better.
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Effective learning is fun, reinforcing, and also efficient as we remove the stressors that cause us and our dogs to feel unmotivated, scared, frustrated, or anxious. ⁣
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Our dogs will learn more effectively when we take the pressure off of them, go at their pace, provide real choices, and have more fun with them.⁣

ID: On a drawing of a whiteboard, the text says “Our dogs’ learning shouldn’t mirror the stressful & punishing nature of the education systems we may have experienced.”. On top of the whiteboard is a drawing of a person doing a “high ten” with a dog with floppy ears, their hands and paws are touching each other.

12/10/2023

Agree!

A few months ago, there had been a report by the ITV in the UK about the compromised wellbeing of puppies at various puppy yoga places, where puppies were not given water even in a hot room because it “might make them p*e more”, some incredibly young puppies at just 6 weeks old were used, and sleepy puppies were often woken up to be carried and cuddled by people.

For starters, it should be clear that having puppies moving around while doing yoga is dangerous for everyone. People may be distracted by the puppies and be more likely to lose their balance and hurt themselves, while puppies are at risk at getting hurt if people fall on them.

We also know that puppies need a lot of sleep and rest. In looking at the schedules of a number of puppy yoga classes around the UK, even for the ones that say puppies get to rest while people are doing yoga, many puppies will most likely find it hard to rest with all the commotion around them. In the report mentioned earlier, some facilities also had loud music and bright lights which certainly do not facilitate good sleep and rest for pups.

“Puppy cuddle time” after the yoga class can range from 30-45 minutes and it is questionable how much choice and agency a puppy has during this long and overwhelming time, especially when there are up 20+ people there with typically 5-12 puppies all here primarily to interact with puppies.

Puppy yoga is often marketed as a way for puppies to get “socialisation” but this is not what socialisation is at all. This is flooding. It’s an incredibly overwhelming experience for puppies and can lead to increased fearful behaviours.

Even from a yoga perspective, puppy yoga is unhelpful for the human taking part. The practice involves being present with the body and mind, and distractions from puppies running around take away from that core part of doing yoga in the first place.

I don’t doubt that most people attending puppy yoga love animals, but as animal lovers we should really consider the ethics around potentially harmful events like “puppy yoga” profiting off both cultural practices and animals before joining them.

ID: The background photo shows a pug looking dog standing on a person doing a yoga pose on a yoga mat. The text says “Think twice before attending ‘puppy yoga’. No, it is not ‘socialisation’ for puppies.”

09/09/2023

Pat from Wicklow Willow created our Snuffari dome and funnel at Beech Hill. We look forward to commissioning Pat again to create another feature for our new location.

What type of willow creation would you like your dogs to enjoy!!

We are delighted to be awarded The Goodbody Outstanding Artist Award at Sculpture in Context this year for our artwork 'Fia Mór'.
It was great to be selected, and then to receive this award was the icing on the cake.
We would like to thank all the organisers, artists and people involved in this year's fantastic exhibition.
We are looking forward to visiting many times over the next few weeks and seeing all the artworks that make this exhibition so special.

02/09/2023

What’s your dogs favourite? 😂

05/08/2023

DON’T FORCE ME TO BE SOCIAL!
Do we like everyone we meet? Do we all enjoy socialising and spending time with lots of different people? I certainly don’t and refer to myself as a “caninetrovert” – a person that much prefers to spend time with dogs rather than people. Maybe I’m a little different to the “norm”, but be that as it may, we are all individuals with different personality styles and social preferences.

Some of us are extroverts, gaining energy from interacting with people; some of us introverts, who find people draining and need alone time to recharge our social batteries and some of us are somewhere in between.

If we acknowledge that we are all different in this way, we also need to acknowledge and accept that our dogs are similar.

They could be overly affectionate or fiercely independent, approachable or nervous, energetic or laid back, confident or cautious, sociable, tolerant, selective or reactive.

We may be really disappointed when our dogs turn out not to be the socialite we expected them to be.

Some may even see this as a behaviour problem that needs to be “fixed”. Sometimes it can be improved, especially if the cause is from a negative experience, but genetics, breed tendencies, individual personalities, health and age all contribute to tolerance levels and sociability.

Accept your dog for who they are, allow them to choose whether they want to be sociable or not, respect their choices and never force an interaction that your dog is not comfortable with.

07/01/2023

Thank you Eimear, Shay & Baxter 🐾💙🐾

“We were very sorry to hear about the park's closure and wanted to thank you for all the great memories. We started bringing Baxter there when he was just 6 months old and it was his absolute favourite place - we'll miss it a lot. Thank you for creating such a wonderful, fun and safe environment. Here's a little collage of our times at Wonder Paws! “

07/01/2023

….and that’s all folks 🥹

07/01/2023

Clearance Day 2 😭💔🐾