Meet Enfys, On Cloud K9’s Visual Guide
Emma Badger 
Meet Enfys, On Cloud K9’s visual guide, created to help us explore how dogs think, feel, communicate, learn, and grow.
You’re going to be seeing quite a lot of this face around On Cloud K9.
This is Enfys, our new visual guide.
She’s a Border Collie, she has some very expressive eyebrows, and she has quite an important job to do.
Enfys was originally created because I wanted a dog I could use in infographics. The more I thought about what I wanted those infographics to do, though, the more complicated that became.
I didn’t just need a picture of a dog.
I needed a dog who could help me show you things.
WHY A BORDER COLLIE?
That part was an easy decision.
I’ve shared most of my life with sheepdogs, they’re my favourite group of dogs, and they’re the dogs I specialise in. So when I started imagining a dog who was going to become a familiar part of On Cloud K9, a Border Collie felt like the obvious choice.
But Enfys needed to be more than recognisably collie-shaped.
One of the things I talk about a lot is looking beyond what a dog is doing and thinking about what they may be feeling and communicating.
And dogs communicate with far more than a wagging tail.
Their eyes, ears, face, posture, weight distribution, movement, and tail can all give us information. We need to look at the whole dog, and at the context around them, rather than relying on one signal in isolation.
So Enfys was designed with communication in mind.
Her tan eyebrows make changes around her eyes particularly easy to see, while the white tip on her tail helps make changes in her tail position and movement clearer.
Those little details are there for a reason.
ONE ENFYS, LOTS OF LIFE STAGES
There was another problem with having just one picture of a dog.
Dogs change.
The puppy who has only been in the world for eight weeks is very different from the adolescent discovering that the world has suddenly become extremely interesting. And both are different again from a mature adult or a senior dog.
If Enfys was going to help us talk about dogs throughout their lives, she needed to grow with the subjects we were discussing.
So you’ll meet her as a young puppy, an older puppy, an adolescent, an adult, and a senior.
She can stand, sit, walk, lie down, play, investigate, rest, look curious, look confused, look delighted, and communicate a whole range of other things through her expression and body language.
She’s still Enfys every time.
We’re simply meeting her at a different point in her life, or seeing her in a different moment.
WHY ENFYS?
There’s no complicated story behind the name.
Enfys means rainbow in Welsh.
I liked the name.
And I love rainbows.
Sometimes that really is enough of a reason.
It also feels rather appropriate for a Welsh dog who is going to become part of such a colourful brand.
WHAT WILL ENFYS ACTUALLY DO?
You’ll see Enfys appearing on the On Cloud K9 website, here on the blog, on Facebook, and in infographics and other learning resources.
But I don’t want her to be there simply because a page needs a nice picture of a dog.
Every appearance should have a job.
Sometimes she might help us notice a change in body language.
Sometimes she might demonstrate the difference between a puppy who is alert and interested and one who is finding something a little too much.
Sometimes her age will help us talk about development.
Sometimes her pose or expression will help make a slightly complicated idea much easier to understand.
And sometimes she’ll simply be there to welcome you into a subject before we start digging into the science behind it.
HELPING US LOOK BENEATH BEHAVIOUR
A lot of what we’ll be exploring on this blog is about what happens underneath behaviour.
Why does a dog react differently today when they coped yesterday?
What happens when stress builds up?
Why might an adolescent suddenly struggle with something that seemed easy as a puppy?
What does sleep have to do with behaviour?
How do learning, emotion, genetics, health, experience, and environment interact?
Some of those subjects can become quite technical surprisingly quickly.
My job is to make them understandable without stripping away all the interesting bits.
And that’s really where Enfys comes in.
She gives us another way of explaining things.
Not because we can look at one drawing of a dog and know exactly what that dog is thinking. Real canine body language is much more nuanced than that.
But because sometimes seeing an idea makes it much easier to understand.
That’s what Enfys is here to help us do.
So, officially, welcome to On Cloud K9, Enfys.
I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing quite a lot of you.
Categories: : Behind The Scenes