Mahogany Gamble (00:00.93)
Hey everyone, I'm Mahogany with Nexus Canine. Welcome to the Canine Fulfillment Podcast. In this very first episode, I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about why I decided to start this podcast and how I hope that it can help people raising dogs all around the world.
As we grow in our dependence on social media and our attentiveness to social media, one thing has started to stand out to me. I have been training dogs for more than 15 years. I've been working with dogs for two decades and I've noticed a trend over time and it's one that has become more and more disconcerting as I see it. And that is that
the landscape of dog raising has become very centered and focused on training dogs. And training is very reactive. And let me tell you what I mean. Years ago, one of my friends asked me, how did you go from being a paramedic to being a dog trainer? I did have a gap in between, but a lot of people are kind of taken aback when they learn, you know, that I went from a medical
field to working with dogs. And what I realized after having a number of people ask me about that is that dog training is just like being a paramedic. We aren't dealing with necessarily life and death or emergent situations, but we are dealing with problems and we are the first responders. And this is what
Generally, dog training is. We are taking a family who's got an issue that generally needs to be resolved very quickly. They can be very urgent, Biting children, chasing cars, reactivity, all of these things require quick and swift action to resolve. And we have essentially a first responder coming in. That's the trainer.
Mahogany Gamble (02:14.894)
Nowadays we have behaviorists, which we're gonna save that for a different podcast because I have a lot of thoughts on behaviorists and our sort of reliance on them today, and none of it is good. But we have a trainer that comes in. They act as the first responder. And this is all reactive. And what I've noticed is when trainers,
talk about prevention, and I say this as a trainer, right? So this is not a knock to trainers. This is just what training has grown and developed into, and it's about time that we change it, and that is really the purpose of this podcast. It is the purpose for the creation of my new company, Nexus K9, which is all education-based, and that's what we're working on.
I'm not here to knock trainers, I am a trainer. I'm here to put attention to the fact that we need to start to create a shift. So when trainers look at prevention, they look at prevention based on the individual problem. So if a dog is reactive, then a trainer might talk to the family about, well, this is why that developed and here's how you prevent or eliminate reactivity.
If a dog is a resource garter, then we talk about it from that perspective. If a dog is aggressive toward other dogs, then we talk about it from that perspective. This is highly problematic, as you can imagine, because every dog is an individual. Even within a litter, you can have so much variation in the dog's personalities, in their genetic propensities. They can have...
wildly different genetic makeups, right? Litter mates. If you have dogs of two or three breeds, the percentage of each of those breeds can be so vastly different in each of the litter mates. So we have to look at dogs as individuals and we can't chase our tails, no pun intended, but we can't chase our tails looking at...
Mahogany Gamble (04:29.068)
Well, we have to tell people how to prevent this problem, and we have to tell people how to prevent this problem. No, we have to teach people how to raise dogs from a fulfillment-centered perspective. And what do I mean by that? Fulfillment-centered essentially means that we are satiating all of our dog's needs. We are ensuring that our dogs are so deeply fulfilled and so deeply happy.
that there is not room for behavioral problems. And that's where we need to shift our focus as opposed to putting everything toward dog training. Dog training has its place. But its place is, if we look at dog raising as a pie, dog training should be no more than 10, 15 % of that pie.
There are so many other elements that we have to look at and that contribute to our dog's overall state of well-being and state of health mentally and physically. And we take so much attention away. So what's happening that I see in training is training has become so grandiose that we are pulling attention away from really all of the things that can help people.
understand how to raise their dog so that the behavioral problems never arise. I'm gonna give you guys one example. And we're gonna talk about one thing because I want to make this real for you and not just talk about it up here and save the rest for the other episodes. Most dogs, most pet dogs today spend about 22 to 23 hours inside of their homes.
This is not a training issue, this is a raising issue. And it's more than just what we're doing, it's how we are understanding our dogs, or lacking understanding of our dogs, right? There is a huge detachment from nature. We as humans are detached from nature. We live in this very technologically forward,
Mahogany Gamble (06:53.166)
world where everything is convenient and we've sucked our dogs into this world with us. Dogs and humans by the way, but we're going to focus on dogs. Dogs were never intended to live in a convenience world. They were not. Dogs were intended to be outdoors with their feet touching the ground 24 hours a day.
They were intended to traverse lands. One of the things that I love when I take my dogs out on trails or parks is I actually get obsessed about watching how many different substrates and textures they feel under their feet. We have forgotten how important that is. We've forgotten that for humans, but we've really forgotten it for dogs. A lot of dogs really only ever feel concrete under their feet or carpet.
Right? You know, maybe a little bit of linoleum or something if you live in an apartment complex, but we have taken that from our dogs. The fact that our dogs should feel the sun on their backs. We've largely taken that from them. They're sitting in homes all day. They aren't traversing lands, which is what dogs without human interference would do. They would leave their homes. They would travel.
miles and miles and miles every single day. They would make their way back using all of their abilities that haven't even been studied today. Right. We you know, we know from other animals, but we don't know in dogs. They're not just using their noses to get back. They're using the sun. They're using the stars. They're using vibration. They're using certain frequencies. They're using type. They're using so many skills.
And when our dogs are sitting inside homes for 22 or 23 hours a day, they're losing all of that. And we have become so entrapped in this convenience era that we have forgotten that our dogs need to explore, that they need to get out, that they need to...
Mahogany Gamble (09:13.452)
be enriched on so many different levels. And so this podcast, this focus, the focus of my company, Nexus Canine, is to be the best advocate for dogs and not just say, well, you gotta teach your dog to sit and you have to teach impulse control and make your dog wait for food, which I think is abhorrent, FYI. All of these things that make up
Training these are not the things that make up fulfillment and We need to start to look at those things in the right perspective Right now training is this big and nobody's talking enough about fulfillment I don't want to say that I'm the only person talking about fulfillment, but it's definitely not getting enough attention For being sorry. I'm getting I'm passionate here. I can't even breathe but for being the most important
and most valuable way to not just make sure our dogs are happy, not just make sure our dogs are fulfilled, but also to make sure that we are preventing problems. We can prevent problems. Like, what a world, what a thing to discuss. If you don't wanna spend five or six or seven or $8,000 to train your dog, invest your time.
and smaller amounts of money earlier on to prevent problems from becoming rooted and established in the first place. That's the key. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this podcast, because if we aren't making sure our dogs are happy, then what the fuck are we doing? Like really and truly, you know, our dogs are not. And I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, I don't have to tell you this. Our dogs are not conversation pieces.
You know, they're not elves on the shelves that are just meant to sit there. They're not, you know, just meant to sit on our couches all day and entertain us when we get home. That's not their purpose. They actually are intended to help us return to nature, help us return to joy. If you watch a dog, a dog's frequency is joy. And that
Mahogany Gamble (11:40.11)
is enough to change the world. I like to think back to 2020 and 2021 in some ways. I'm not gonna go into, there was a lot of good during that time in relation to dogs, okay? I don't wanna talk about COVID, but in relation to dogs, everybody was feeling despair.
And everybody was feeling helpless and isolated and alone. And what did people do? They got dogs. They adopted dogs. They, they, they bought dogs. They imported dogs. Dogs were everywhere. Trainers were completely inundated with dog training inquiries, generally for puppies over these two years, because people turned to dogs when they felt despair.
When we think about that, how fucking incredible is that that these little four legged, sometimes three legged beings, they operate in such a frequency of joy and authenticity and truth that when people are feeling their lowest, so many people decide, I want to get a dog. I want that dog to, I'm gonna cry because this is, I'm getting intense here, but.
I want that dog to to bring me joy, to give me company, to enrich and enhance my life. If a dog can help pull us out of the depths of hell when we are in the depths of hell, don't we owe it to them to do anything and everything they need?
to feel good and happy and have robust health. If you can't agree with me on that, don't ever listen to another episode of this podcast. But if you can agree with me on that, listen to every single episode of this podcast and let's create a new reality together for dogs. Because they have an unbelievable mission.
Mahogany Gamble (14:03.374)
Their connection with humans, their integration into our lives and into our lifestyles is not a mistake. It's just imbalanced. And the imbalance is that we have pulled them in when the real intention is for them to pull us out. Dogs are intended to pull us back out into nature.
to pull us back out into truth, to pull us back out into authenticity, into joy. They are the teachers of how we are supposed to live. But if we ignore what they need, and if we ignore how they need to become happy, then we're gonna miss that lesson, and we're gonna drag them into a world that is chaotic.
that is unhealthy.
Humans and dogs, we're all living shorter than we should be. Don't go Google this, because Google and AI are not gonna tell you the truth. Our telomeres as humans, should, our telomeres should last 120 years.
but they're not. Humans are dying now in their 50s and their 60s and their 70s and their 80s. Dogs used to live into their 20s. Again, if you Google this or if you go to AI, it's not gonna tell you that. But talk to your parents and your grandparents and ask them, how long were these dogs living? How were these dogs living? How long were these dogs healthy?
Mahogany Gamble (16:00.1)
well into their twenties, even large, even medium and large size dogs. So I want us to
to work with and commune with dogs the way that nature intended. Nature intended for them to be saviors in a way, if you really think about it. And if our world of raising dogs just gets focused on this sliver of training, we're really, really missing out. So we owe it to dogs.
to help them become happy and fulfilled. And in doing so, we ourselves are going to become more happy and more fulfilled. The last thing I'm gonna share is I was talking about fulfillment-centered relationships on Facebook. And a woman commented and said,
People can't build fulfillment-centered relationships with their dogs because they themselves are not fulfilled. And it was a really sad comment to read, but I completely understood it.
People aren't fulfilled because people aren't in nature, right? People aren't fulfilled because we're trying to reach fulfillment through work. We've forgotten about play. We've forgotten about nature. We've forgotten about the outdoors. We've forgotten about connecting to the earth. We've forgotten about joy and authenticity. So.
Mahogany Gamble (17:48.13)
That's why dogs exist, is to remind us of those things. That is their purpose. And the cool thing, and this is what I shared with that commenter, the cool thing is that when we work to fulfill our dogs, we also become more fulfilled in the process. And that is the point, my friends. So if you're down with that journey, if that sounds cool to you,
to have a dog that's so happy that not only do they bring you more joy, not only do they bring you more robust health, but they also don't have behavioral problems as a bonus, right? Like that's the fun bonus is they're gonna be problem-free dogs. And that's why I say I help families raise problem-free dogs because I do.
Do that only through training. You have to do that through fulfillment. So again, thank you for checking out this podcast. Please like, subscribe. I don't even know how these podcasts work. I don't know if you can like, I know you can subscribe. Please subscribe, please share with your friends. Please get on this journey because it's gonna be incredible. And I promise every single thing that I bring to you,
is going to be incredible. It is going to remind us of the unbelievable power that we have and the unbelievable power that our dogs have to be enriched, to be fulfilled, to feel incredible every single day. And what problems exist for dogs or for people when every single day we can feel so good in our own skin?
and we can so and feel and feel so connected and united, you know, not just to the people and the dogs around us, but to nature, which is so abundant and so powerful and magical. So please jump along for the ride. I'm really excited to have you all here. I'm. Yeah, I'm I need to stop talking. This is you're going to learn in the course of this podcast that.
Mahogany Gamble (20:14.338)
This is my challenge, is to wrap things up, especially once I get passionate, it just goes and goes and flows. So anyway, thank you so much for joining. I really look forward to the future conversations that we're gonna have. Lexi says hello, if you're watching on video. yeah, I'm happy to be here with you all. Have a good day.
