Who is Chaser?
The Power of Play
About
Mission
Goal: To create greater awareness of the importance of Chaser’s work.
Vision: Inspiring play-based learning with our dogs and other animals, unleashing the genius of all animals, and in so doing expand humanity’s horizons to encompass a new understanding of ourselves in the natural world. In the end, it is always the quality of our relationships that determines the quality of their learning.
Target Audience: K-12 students in schools, camps, afterschool programs.
Methodology: The Power of Play, the Power of Praise. Pop Pop is the anacronym and the name Chaser knew for Professor Pilley.
Why Now?
The world is searching for greater ways to connect and communicate. We are looking for common ground.
The conduit is dogs.
Science has been discovering that we share stunning cognitive similarities. We have more in common than different and Chaser is evidence of this.
Dogs are magic in plain sight. While each dog has its own genetic blueprint, they are a product of human behavior. Positive and negative experiences shape the dog sitting in front of you. Dogs are our direct connection to nature, which is critical at this moment in time. They also cross all boundaries and languages. A dog on one side of the world is the same as one on the other. They all speak the same language and show the same love and devotion whether it is in Timbuktu, Uganda, Russia, Chile, New Zealand, or Spartanburg SC.
Chaser's international fame has shown us that dogs are our greatest common denominator. In every corner of the earth, people love their dogs.
How?
By creating a program to expose students to Chaser’s methods of learning through play and nurturing innate gifts, we have a platform to bring a greater understanding of science that links us to nature. We have an opportunity to shape young minds to understand that they have purpose and that if their learning does not happen – it is not them, it’s the methods. I am more and more convinced that the gateway for this shift to occur, is through our connection with dogs.
While educating kids about dogs, we will also explore:
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What is a scientist? Someone that discovers things – We can query to the kids – have you ever discovered something? How did it make you feel?
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Paradigm shifts, what are they and why do they matter? There are false paradigms that are accepted simply “because.” Ex. Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. This is a very misleading and false paradigm, simply because words matter and my father’s work with Chaser illustrates this. Communication matters. The tone of our words matters.
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The power of myth.
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For animals to have more rights, we will need to give up some of our own. – How to be grateful for a world order, one in which we live in nature and on the earth. We must have greater understanding of how we cannot exist without nurturing nature.