08/21/2026
š¾ Guardian Journal :
Today I watched Josh build walls.
Which honestly isnāt unusual around here. š There is always something being built, fixed, trained, cleaned, or completely rethought.
But these walls are different.
After seeing one of the dogs go into a home and become nervous around things that would seem completely normal to us, Josh came back and said, āOkay. We need to fix that.ā
Because a house is a LOT for a dog who has never really experienced one.
A bedroom. A kitchen. An office. A home gym. Different floors, sounds, smells, doors opening and closing, people moving from room to room.
We expect dogs to just walk into all of that and know what to do.
So instead of waiting for them to figure it out later, Josh decided to bring the home to them.
He started building walls inside Purpose for Paws to create a little mock houseāfour spaces where the dogs can learn what different parts of a home actually feel like before they go into their forever home.
And watching him do this, I understand why it matters so much to him.
Josh never really had a normal home growing up.
He didnāt have a family environment where a house felt safe and familiar. He spent parts of his childhood locked away in basements and rooms, so even something as simple as home can carry a lot of weight for him.
Iāve watched him walk into other peopleās homes for training and become more alert. Things that are completely normal to that family arenāt necessarily normal to him.
And I think thatās part of why he notices these things in dogs.
He knows what it feels like to walk into an environment and think, āI donāt know how Iām supposed to act here.ā
So when he saw a dog struggling with the same thing, he didnāt just accept it.
He changed the training.
Thatās what I love about watching him work.
He doesnāt see a problem and say, āWell, thatās just how it is.ā
He asks, āHow do we fix it?ā
So today, the walls went up.
Purpose for Paws is becoming a little more like a homeānot to make the dogs perfect, but to make their future feel a little less foreign.
One wall. One dog. One lesson at a time. ā¤ļøš¾