It’s been a big week here at Bad Dog Agility as we welcome the Class of 2026 to the VIP program, so we have just two pieces for you to read. First, let me ask a question…
Should You FaceTime Your Dog?
Sarah’s on the road in California this week for a stretch of big water polo events, and the poodle went along for the ride. Which left the other dogs at home, and Sarah wondering the same thing a lot of us do from a hotel room: would a quick FaceTime make them feel better, or is that really just for us?
The research here is thin, but some data suggests FaceTime may not help, and for some dogs could make things a little worse.
The issue is a sensory mismatch. Dogs read the world through scent, body language, and physical presence as much as sound. When your dog hears your voice on a call but can’t find you in the room, the voice says you’re here while everything else says you’re not. They recognize you, they look for the reunion, and then it doesn’t come. That gap can turn recognition into frustration. The voice recognition itself is real, a 2019 study found dogs can pick out their owner by voice alone. It’s the missing scent and body that turns that recognition into a problem.
The other worry comes from veterinarian Dr. Alex Crow in this Newsweek piece: a call can reopen something that had already closed. A dog who’d settled in nicely with a sitter may start pacing, whining, or heading for the door right after hearing you, basically reset back into “wait, where did they go?”
It’s not all skeptical, for the record. A researcher at the University of Glasgow even built a “DogPhone,” a ball her Labrador could shake to call her up whenever he felt like it. But that was about giving the dog some control, not proving that calls can help a dog’s mood.
Now I want to hear from you! Have you ever FaceTimed your dog while you were away? Did it seem to settle them, wind them up, or did they not care in the slightest? Hit reply and let me know and I’ll share the results next week.
New York Knicks Triumph
Last week I left you with the New York and San Antonio series still in progress. It’s settled now. The Knicks closed it out in five, with Jalen Brunson scoring 45 in the clinching game in San Antonio to win the franchise’s first title since 1973. He was named Finals MVP.
I’ve been thinking about Brunson all week, and not just about basketball.
When the Knicks signed him out of Dallas in 2022, plenty of people thought they had overpaid for a backup point guard. He played great in New York for two years, and then in the summer of 2024 he did something almost no one does. He signed an extension with New York worth about $113 million less than he could have had by waiting one more year, specifically so the team would have the room to keep and add the players around him. The same folks who laughed at the original signing laughed again at the pay cut. Two years later he is holding the trophy, and two of the Villanova teammates he won national titles with in college are holding it next to him.
What affected me was the interview afterward. He could barely get the words out. Asked how it felt to finally have the thing he had chased his whole life, he didn’t mention the result at all. He talked about the work, about every summer he could remember, by himself in an empty gym.
Here is where my mind went. For us, it is never quite that lonely, because we always have our dog.
I love that part of it, working a puzzle out alongside a dog and feeling it finally click. We are a team, and the triumph is real. It is real because the work was hard and took so long. You do not become a great agility team in a few weeks. For almost all of us it takes years, and usually more than one dog, just to start approaching anything like mastery. Brunson, with a championship in his hands and nothing to say about it except those summers filled with training, was a good reminder of that. Trust the process.
“I’m in awe.” –Jalen Brunson
Until next week, tell me what happens when you FaceTime your dog at team@baddogagility.com.
Happy Training,
