05/17/2026
It is interesting how differently people are now expected to live/work compared to even ten or twenty years ago, particularly those of us whose work, hobbies, passions, or like myself a business with animals involved that nowadays exist in public view online.
Before social media, most lives were lived with a degree of natural privacy. People made decisions, learned lessons, made mistakes, solved problems, experienced heartbreaks, changed direction, sought advice quietly, and carried the weight of difficult choices within relatively small circles of people who actually knew them and understood the wider context surrounding those decisions.
Now, many of us live in a world where people who have never sat at our kitchen table, never held one of our dogs, never shared our sleepless nights, never carried our financial risks, never experienced the emotional burden of responsibility we carry daily, can still feel extraordinarily entitled to analyse, narrate, dissect, and morally conclude upon moments of our lives from fragments they have observed through a screen.
And nowhere do I think this becomes more complex than in the world of dog breeding, because unlike many things in life, breeding exists at the intersection of science, instinct, probability, a little hope, unpredictability, and nature itself.
You can spend years researching pedigrees, studying health data, learning from mentors, making careful decisions, investing emotionally and financially into doing the best you possibly can, and still encounter outcomes that no amount of knowledge, love, effort, or diligence could have entirely prevented.
That is not recklessness, it’s not intentional, that is biology and nature itself
But social media has increasingly created a culture where hindsight is mistaken for wisdom and uncertainty is treated as incompetence. Once an outcome exists, people often narrate backwards as though the result had always been obvious, inevitable, and avoidable, despite the fact that they themselves were never the ones standing in the position of responsibility when those decisions were actually being made.
And what I think many people quietly carry, not only in dogs but across countless industries and professions, is the exhausting awareness that there are individuals watching not from a place of compassion, curiosity, or genuine concern, but from a place of anticipation.
Waiting for something to go wrong, waiting for confirmation of a story they had already decided about you long before reality had the courtesy to interrupt them.
That changes people more than I think society currently acknowledges.
Not because responsible people fear accountability. Accountability matters, honest discussion matters, transparency of course matters.
But there is a profound emotional difference between existing in a community that wants to understand complexity and existing in an environment where vulnerability increasingly feels like a public sport.
And no I do not believe this affects everybody equally.
The genuinely careless people often continue exactly as they always have. They are not the ones lying awake replaying decisions in their heads at two in the morning.
They are not the ones agonising over outcomes, questioning themselves, researching endlessly, or carrying the emotional consequences long after everybody else has moved on to the next piece of online theatre.
It is often the conscientious people, the reflective people, the people trying hardest to do right by others and their dogs, who absorb the greatest psychological impact from prolonged public scrutiny.
Over time, that level of exposure changes behaviour.
People become quieter, more guarded, less honest and open about the difficulties they are negotiating.
More fearful of making decisions publicly, Some just leave entirely, I did with the stud dogs for a number of years, because I was fed up of hearing stories about me my dogs created by individuals that had never met them or me
And ironically, communities then wonder why transparency disappears, while simultaneously punishing people whenever they dare to reveal the reality that working with living creatures, human beings, businesses, or life itself will never come with guarantees.
I also think social media has blurred the line between observation and ownership. People can begin to feel as though regular access to somebody’s life online grants them complete understanding of that person’s world, motives, ethics, competence, or character, when in reality they are often constructing absolute conclusions from tiny fragments of a far larger picture they were never truly part of.
And beneath all of this sits something many people feel but rarely say aloud, modern life increasingly asks people not simply to live, but to live under observation.
To experience grief under observation, make decisions under observation, learn under observation, fail under observation, and maybe recover under observation.
And whilst visibility absolutely can encourage higher standards in some areas, I also believe there comes a point where constant exposure stops creating thoughtful accountability and instead begins creating fear, performance, emotional exhaustion, and silence in people who were already trying their absolute best in the first place.
I suspect many people, far beyond the dog world, know exactly what that feels like.
