Mahogany Gamble (00:00.834)
Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to episode three of the Canine Fulfillment Podcast. I'm really excited for today's episode because I'm going to dive into what canine fulfillment is and hopefully give you guys a sense of why it is so important to understand whether we're working with dogs professionally, working with dogs as enthusiasts.
or just raising dogs. We all need to understand canine fulfillment. We need to understand what dogs need to be happy and thrive. So the first question, of course, is what is canine fulfillment? And canine fulfillment is a term that I coined and am now popularizing. The idea is not anything new. It is adapted from
the popular term biological fulfillment. Years ago, I was giving presentations on biological fulfillment and talking about what dogs needed as far as enrichment, what dogs needed as far as diet and other different elements that support a healthy lifestyle. When we discuss biology, which is the study of life,
It is broken down into so many different areas, but we can look at it as the structure, the function, the origin, the growth and evolution of life. And when we use those terms to discuss dogs or canine fulfillment, they don't make as much sense. So in canine fulfillment, I took principles from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow
studied and looked at human needs and his primary conclusion was that when humans are stuck in survival mode, which is one of our sort of basic needs at the bottom of this hierarchy, they find it very difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill their higher needs because they are stuck in survival mode and
Mahogany Gamble (02:26.06)
You know, it was controversial. There are a lot of people even today that don't agree. I think when we look at the nervous system in humans and we look at, you know, the sort of vibrational frequency of humans, if we are stuck in lower vibrational frequencies, if we're stuck in survival mode,
And our nervous system is overwhelmed. It is very difficult to achieve our higher needs, but it's definitely not impossible. And there are people that are doing it. You know, there are people that are creating beautiful art, for example, who may not be surviving and thriving to the degree that they want to, but they're still able to satiate their
deeper intrinsic needs. So when we look at canine fulfillment, like I said, modeled the actual chart, which I call Gamble's assessment of canine needs. I modeled that after Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It needed to be expanded and shifted in order to
be more appropriate for dogs, but that's where it comes from. And then a lot of the ideas behind canine fulfillment are adapted from biological fulfillment, which is essentially the same. It's just, I wanted to change the name to canine fulfillment because it includes more than just biology. so, you know, biology is a catch all. So is canine fulfillment, but
it expands into more than biology. Enrichment, for example, the kinds of enrichment activities that we do for dogs, I would not necessarily consider those. They support biology and their needs are rooted in biology, but when we talk about them as activities, they are not actually biological in and of themselves. So.
Mahogany Gamble (04:40.438)
When discussing canine fulfillment, for those of you watching on YouTube, I am glancing at my notes for this one because I had a lot of notes and I don't want to skip things over. but when we discuss canine fulfillment, we are thinking about genetics, temperament, adaptive needs. I don't talk that much about evolution in dogs because evolution is extremely slow. So we are not seeing a lot of.
evolutionary shifts in dogs. What we're seeing is adaptive shifts, desires, emotional needs, social needs, enrichment needs. It's the full gamut of what dogs need to be truly happy and healthy. And to me, that's kind of the gist of canine fulfillment. And I'll circle back around to that because canine fulfillment ultimately comes down to the study.
and the discovery of what dogs need to be fulfilled, problem-free and robust in health. And I'm gonna come back a lot to this notion of raising dogs to be problem-free. So in order for that to happen, it really requires us to look at everything. We can't look at just training, we can't look at just enrichment, we can't look at just...
the dog's physiological needs. We have to look at everything. It's not just the ways that we raise dogs and the decisions that we make around dogs. It's also how they interact with nature, whether they follow nature's patterns, whether they are in harmony with what nature intended for them to thrive. And this is one of the areas that we are sorely sorely lacking. We're losing the battle here for our dogs because
Like I talked about in the first episode, we have sucked dogs into our modern lifestyle and we've completely, in a lot of cases, we've completely disconnected them from nature. And even for the dogs that get to spend time in nature, a lot of them are disconnected from the natural rhythms and cycles. And I was speaking with a group yesterday that is going to start.
Mahogany Gamble (07:02.474)
my certification course on canine fulfillment and talking about this exact point and sharing that every cell in the dog's body, every organ, every hormone runs on a rhythm that matches the rhythm of nature. And when we create or support disharmony by not allowing the dog to be within that rhythm,
then we create disharmony on many, levels, literally on the cellular level, which affects everything, which affects energy, digestion, long-term health. We create disharmony in each of the organs, and the organs are there, obviously, to support life's functions and all of the physical biology. And we create disharmony in the hormones.
And we're already creating a lot of disharmony in the hormones because so many of us spay and neuter our dogs very, very young. So all of the hormones within the dog's body interact with one another. When we remove sex hormones, it's not like they are isolated or that they function in isolation. They interact with other hormones.
And so when we remove those, we already set dogs back because now there needs to be, their body needs to figure out a balance without the manufacturing of those hormones. And then when we further disrupt the dog by, you know, pulling them out of the natural rhythms and cycles of nature in the environment.
then we more deeply affect the rhythm of the hormones. And so I'm not gonna go deep into that in this podcast, but I want you guys to start to think about the implications that all of these interventions have. When we spay and neuter our dogs as puppies, it's not just protection from pregnancy.
Mahogany Gamble (09:26.894)
or protection from getting another dog pregnant or protection from, you know, certain behaviors. It is a massive disruption to the harmony within the body. And it's another intervention that we pull dogs out of the natural rhythm of the environment. That is a human intervention and it's deeply disruptive to the dog's biology.
And when we start to disrupt the dog's biology, we then begin to disrupt behavior. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more, as well, because that's an element that's really missing in training. So I'll get to that, but I'm going to go along with the rest of my notes for now. So, you know, how dogs eat, how they move.
their bodies, the freedom that they have to explore, their harmony within nature. All of these things should be aligned with natural rhythms. And that is a tremendous part of canine fulfillment. These things directly affect their bodies, their ability to handle the stressors of life, of which there are many, right? We have...
emotional stressors, environmental stressors, physical stressors, and whether or not dogs can handle those things has a lot to do with those things I mentioned above, right? Like how they eat, how they move, the freedom they have to explore, their harmony with nature, whether we allow their hormones to stay intact, you know, how we allow them to function within
nature's cycles and rhythms, all of those things then create an effect in the body that determines whether a dog can handle stressors or not. And this is what is largely missing in training, which is why I'm starting a series called Stop Training the Dog, because we are so focused on training and everybody has become convinced
Mahogany Gamble (11:44.32)
that training is all dogs need when that could not be farther from the truth. Dogs may benefit from training, but if we raise them well in harmony, in allowance of their natural instincts and abilities and drives, can create, can raise dogs that are free from behavioral problems and training then becomes icing on the cake. Right. I think
You know, for me, the only thing that I focus on now, my dogs do sports and in the sports, they do need to have trained behaviors. But for everyday life, there are a couple of things that I want my dogs to have. The first is I want my dogs to have a rock solid recall without exception, without condition. I want my dog to have.
every single one of my dogs to have a very, very solid recall. The second thing I want is for my dogs to have a weight. And this is because we do a lot of stuff out in public and on trails and in parks. And I want my dogs to understand if I ask you to wait, just stay there. Maybe there is a car passing. Maybe I want to allow, you know, a family to pass with their children, something like that. And I want my dogs to have a down stay.
Other than that, there's not much training that any of us or our dogs really needs unless we need to apply those to something specific. I don't even teach my dogs how to walk on leash. I teach my dogs how to walk with me off leash. And then when I need to put leashes on them, I just slip leashes on them. But they already have the concept of walking together with me.
I do that with my puppies. I'm doing that with my puppy right now. I'm teaching him, Hey, just follow along. It's beneficial. I'm attentive to you. I'm engaged with you and he will learn to stick with me when I'm moving because that's what we've practiced since he was a puppy. And so he doesn't need to have a bunch of leash skills and a bunch of.
Mahogany Gamble (14:03.052)
you know, random word communications. What he needs is to be able to be a puppy and to be able to be a dog and to eat good food and to have a healthy circadian rhythm. And, and to have a bond with me that transcends words and training and tricks. So training is missing.
the recognition of how the body influences behavior. And this is a huge problem because training is about the prevention or the cessation of behavioral problems. But it entirely neglects one of the primary causes. And this is why canine fulfillment is so important because in canine fulfillment, we look at all of the causes.
Not just, you know, did, did the owner allow the dog to meet too many dogs on leash? Did the owner put the puppy in a precarious situation? You know, did the owner create some kind of confusion here or there? That is the premise of most training is most training falls back on either there's a, an issue in the dog's genetics or there's an issue in the way the dog was raised.
And whether that dog was raised in a shelter, in a rescue on the streets or in a dog's home, training is going to come back to those two things. But here's the problem with only looking at those two things. One, if we just look at genetics, genetics always has a switch to flip. So we can flip switches on and off in a dog's genetics. I've seen this
many times with dogs that I've bred and dogs that I've raised when I look at their litter mates. So some litter mates will not display certain behaviors and some litter mates will. And it's complex because genetics are not a precise science. know, it's not like they get
Mahogany Gamble (16:23.406)
50 % from the mother and 50 % from the father, there can be interesting little mixes and dynamics. But in some of the dogs, because I have a lot of experience in observation of dogs, and one of the things I always observe in dogs is their potential. I observe the potential for a particular behavior, and that's really important to me. I wanna know if the foundation of that behavior exists in the dog.
Because if we want to prevent it from emerging, we have to know that it exists within. So I can see, there's a little bit of that in there. If I do X, Y, or Z, I can make that manifest. And so I will see that potential and know that that manifested in some of the litter mates. One of my dogs, for example, almost all of her litter mates has
bitten people. And one of the things that I noticed when she was young at 10 weeks old, I said, I'm noticing there is a shift in her acceptance of people. So in the litter, they all accepted people. They looked very, very social and open. And when we started to separate them, I noticed, okay, here's a very significant shift.
Now she does not want to accept people and she's closed. And so I shifted the way that I raised her to ensure that she felt confident and safe and secure around people. And some of her litter mates were raised a little bit differently and they have now bite histories with people. So
When we look at genetics, we have to understand that there is a switch to flip and we can flip that switch on and off as far as expression, not as far as potentiality. The potentiality is going to be there, but as far as expression, we can flip that switch on and off.
Mahogany Gamble (18:43.936)
And then when we look at.
Mahogany Gamble (19:39.116)
And then when we look at and overemphasize the way that a dog was raised or the quote unquote mistakes that people made in raising the dog, we're missing a huge, huge piece of not information, but we're missing a huge need and trait and quality of dogs, which is adaptability. So it's oftentimes not
what did this owner not do or what did this owner do? It's, I ask why was the dog's body unable to adapt to the stressors of life? And that may come back down to genetics, but again, remember there's a switch to flip. And oftentimes it's gonna come back to this physical disharmony. This disharmony in the body can affect
the literal layers of the body that drive the nervous system. And when we neglect that as trainers, trainers are not doing anything wrong, it's simply not a part of the trainer education. So when we neglect that, when we don't look at, hey, why is the nervous system so triggered?
It's usually not because the owner did X, Y, or Z. It's usually because there's disharmony in the body. And because there's disharmony in the body, the nervous system cannot accept the stressor, process the stressor, and then move the stressor out, move the experience out of the body. Those negative experiences are getting stuck inside the dog's body, and then they begin to stack as triggers. And the dog cannot
move forward and so we start to see these really deep and complex behavioral issues. so training will continue to neglect a lot of the primary causes of behavioral issues because they will not look at behavior from the perspective of canine fulfillment. Now, you know, that's a broad generalization.
Mahogany Gamble (21:59.212)
There are trainers and there are people starting to have these discussions, but this is the beauty, the value of canine fulfillment is we get to look at these things, not just get to look at these things. This is what canine fulfillment is. It's looking at everything and how each of these things affects one another because they all do. And
Though we may not right now have, we do have actually a lot of science today that says, you know, that this is, you know, X is causative of Y and Z. but we might not have all of it, but we do know that the physical body can affect behavior. I'll give you one example. When a dog is overloaded in toxins, the discomfort.
from being overloaded in toxins, not just the physical discomfort, but the discomfort in the organs, the discomfort in the nervous system. Those are things that we might not notice in our dogs. They might not move differently. They might not whimper. They might not whine, but there is discomfort in the body and that discomfort from, let's say, an overload of toxins because the body, because the dogs so in disharmony that they cannot
process toxins out of the body. So now that begins to affect their behavior because there's discomfort there that we can't see and the dog doesn't even necessarily feel. And we can see this in people too, just to give a sort of simpler example. If you have, think unfortunately today, most of us know someone with an autoimmune disease or disorder.
And even if something isn't physically painful, maybe they're fatigued all the time, or maybe it creates a certain, you know, a certain thinking pattern or process or a sense of doom or sadness in having to deal with it, that can directly affect behavior because it directly affects the nervous system. So,
Mahogany Gamble (24:20.628)
These are the things that we are going to discuss and get deeper into in canine fulfillment because they are so important. Canine fulfillment is the whole, the entirety. I actually think of it as the ocean because it's so broad and it's so deep. And once you get into canine fulfillment, it continues to the depth.
continues to go deeper and deeper and deeper. know, once we understand these things, it doesn't, there's no stopping point, if you will. We can always go further down in our understanding or deeper in our understanding. And so we're looking at the entirety of what dogs need in order to
be so complete, so fulfilled that their bodies literally cannot house behavioral problems. We want dogs to be so complete and so fulfilled that they have to live the longest, healthiest life because that's the only thing that their bodies can support is a long, healthy life. So this is kind of a...
brief overview of what canine fulfillment is. In the subsequent sessions, we're gonna dive deeper into a lot of these topics. I am going to start having some guests on, which is gonna be a lot of fun so that we can have some back and forth. But I wanted to spend a few episodes, and I think I will do two more episodes solo, but I wanted to spend a few episodes just diving into...
what it is we're looking at and what it is we're talking about. Because it is very profound and there's a lot of room for growth and understanding. If you're interested in anything beyond the podcast, I have an ebook that's out right now. I will have another ebook out in a few weeks. I have a certification course that is intended for professionals.
Mahogany Gamble (26:39.966)
I have a basic course I'm starting. I will soon be promoting a mini lecture series for people who don't have the time or the finances to do the full course, but they still want a deeper understanding of canine fulfillment. I also have a follow along course to show pet dog owners how to raise puppies that are in a fulfillment centered manner. So we're focusing on raising
problem-free dogs and I'm really excited about that course. It's timed perfectly right now. My puppy is nine weeks old and so you'll get to see the entire process of how to raise these dogs. So if you are interested in anything beyond the podcast, go to nexuscanine.com and you'll be able to find all of the information there. You can also shoot me an email if you have any questions at
info at nexuscanine.com. Thank you guys for tuning in to episode three and we'll see you in a couple weeks.
