A cleansing downpour
The voluptuousness of mid-June
Well, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea where two weeks went.
That’s not true. I absolutely do. Holed up in a Holiday Inn is no way to spend a week (although we were treated majestically - suffice to say we all arrived at the point of throwing ourselves into a canal by the end of it). We did get to spend a couple of days at the Etihad stadium, which is fine if you like that kind of a thing.
It feels kind of prestigious to be part of an exam team so large that the only place to house us is a football stadium. That feels kind of mad. We’ve 606000 papers to mark this year - marking went live last Thursday after what felt like the delivery of thousands of hours of training. I’m already regretting saying I’d step up following my immediate line manager’s retirement. Not only is she much missed (though my new line manager is lovely), I had literally no idea how much work she did. We must have sifted through 10000 scripts to find exemplars of marks. I got to bed and crashed completely as soon as we’d done each night.
It also feels kind of good to get out of the dog world for a little while and talk about teacherly things. Influencers in the teacher world are as damaging as they are in the dog world (differently so, but perhaps with a broader scope). One absolute unmentionable on YouTube has been telling students they need to do the exam in completely different ways than we mark, and if students on his 500000+ channel follow his advice, they’ll be much the worse off. I also found out why on the Sunday before the lit exam, one of my students dumped her usual great responses for some pickled herring writing about the influence of Freud’s ego and the id in Jekyll & Hyde, a book published a good three decades before Freud… thankfully I managed to get her to see sense before the exam the next day, but it’s clear that the dog world is not alone in having such powerful media figures who do more harm than good.
I know many of my dog colleagues can feel that the dog world is a contentious place when it comes to opinions… it’s nothing new. I don’t think there are many professions where there’s not a divide between those who know and those who - well, who knows what they know?! - how to run popular social channels maybe.
Stepping out is good for reminding me that life is ever such.
Plus, I get to spend it with non-animal folk who always end up talking about their animals, so… it’s a win.
The long journey north gave me ample time to consume a couple of audiobooks by Peter Godfrey-Smith and to contemplate the lives of octopuses and cuttlefish. Daily tram journeys gave me time to consume a couple of Barbara King reflections on animal lives. So it was not a completely animal-free zone.
It was suggested at one point that I bring Lidy to the Holiday Inn as a therapy dog for the senior marker group, but I’m not sure how much use she would be other than lying in a corner with her trotters up while we all busted a gut trying to find examples of what the best and worst grades should look like.
PS… it turned to rain within two hours of arriving in Manchester, which says it all, and I wore two pairs of pyjamas to bed. Just saying. It stayed like that until I left.
Anyway, I did manage to get some stuff out over the last couple of weeks, so here’s a round-up.
The Last Two Weeks’ Compendium
I’ve been trying to finalise the front end of the fear course so that it will be good to open to sales in a month’s time. It’ll go live on the first Monday in August and I am so excited. Time spent on it in the last two weeks has been zero, however. Now that the DoGenius session is done and my remaining Y11 and Y13 students have gone, I have some flexibility. I’m also having to farm out dog clients to others, but it is lovely to catch up with current clients.
This week will really set the pattern for the next ten or so.
There have been two substacks for supporters - both looking at dogs in Judaism over the years. Not so easy to take any major religion as a singular entity, but it’s always interesting to think about how our heritage shapes how we view dogs and how we relate to them.
There’s been a few posts on Facebook too:
One on bringing your open eyes and your humble self to your dog
One on feeling okay with not knowing stuff about dogs (and recognising not knowing as a signal for potential reinforcement)
One on understanding what anxiety might look like in dogs
One on holding on to the end goal for your dog
One on recognising whether your clients (or yourself!) are good at being helped.
Not everyone can cope with feeling a bit incompetent around people they barely know. That reminds me that I’m coming up on Four WHOLE years since the Client-Centred book happened - which all feels a bit mad because four years is a very long time ago, isn’t it? 2026 is going to be my year of books. I hope. Though I have such plans for 2026 I don’t know how that will happen.
I’ve also decided that once this marking season is out of the way, I’ll be rethinking how I share stuff. Social media returns are in the toilet and no matter how much FB tells me to do video or stories or whatever else dance of the day they want me to do, it’s just not putting posts in front of people who’ve followed the page. Plus, a tech friend pointed out that hate farming has reached epic proportions on FB - something that once I saw it, I really saw it. It’s only on apps, apparently, rather than web-based versions of FB, but my friend’s theory is that FB on app is actively following the semantic content of your posts and then presenting offensive or ‘alternative views’ content to people (including your friends who have different opinions than you) for angry emojis and arguments. I am very good at not paying attention to such content, as my TikTok feed will no doubt demonstrate, but I took one look at the feed for both my business pages on FB via the app and it was immediately obvious this was the case. I can’t see pages I followed or enjoy - only page after page of people promoting argument.
Most likely, that will be here (although substack is largely unpoliced and faces accusations that it does not adequately limit offensive content) but it will also be through email. It’ll also be more ‘keepable’ content that gives you more value, though it won’t be as frequent. That’ll be exclusive video content and dog behaviour stuff like books and chats and so on.
I’m hugely sad to lose the social side of Facebook but it is what it is. We’ve moved from interaction to consumption, it’s clear. I’m not prepared to engage in bun fights for the sake of it, so it feels like I could spend that time better in other ways that are helpful to people. I’m glad I’m here, I will say. I’ll be rethinking how to share stuff for you here too so that it’s away from the anger-fuel of certain algorithms.
On the cards
I’m really hoping to pick up the game with the fear course. While it’s feasible not to write any of it for the next nine weeks, it’s not something I want to do since it’ll just kick the final date for writing further into 2026. I was hoping to be able to do a session a week. We’ll see. Cheer me on!
There’s a substack for subscribers on Thursday on dogs in Christianity. Since Christianity has shaped so much Western philosophy, it’s a good place to be.
I’ll try to do some other stuff, promise!
Miscellany & Paraphernalia
Although I’ve got a 12-week stint of marking (followed by a 7-week stint of reviewing), I’m already thinking about the time beyond… new diary for September ordered and I’m going to be thinking about how Lighten Up goes in 2026. Very interested in your thoughts as to what you’d like more of!
Other than a little dreaming, a little vision space, it’s just full steam ahead, all sails set to maximise the wind. I’m doing nothing other than fiction in my down time simply because my brain can’t cope with other stuff, although my to-read pile of new animal literature is already stacking up.
When will this end?!!!
So many books and so few hours in the day!
Have a great week people - here’s hoping for less voluptuous weather this week! June always brings her fullest exhibitions.