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Erik & The Working Shibas
Erik Gerner — Rhythm Listener & Field Founder 🎧🌱🧭
Erik Gerner — Rhythm Listener & Field Founder 🎧🌱🧭
Erik Gerner — Rhythm Listener & Field Founder 🎧🌱🧭
Erik doesn’t walk dogs — he listens to them.
Over 25 years in the field taught him that control is never the goal — continuity is. Dogs don’t need domination. They need someone who can hear what most people ignore: the moment rhythm shifts.
He’s not here to manage behavior — he’s here to witness it.
To step into the emotional current. To fee
Erik doesn’t walk dogs — he listens to them.
Over 25 years in the field taught him that control is never the goal — continuity is. Dogs don’t need domination. They need someone who can hear what most people ignore: the moment rhythm shifts.
He’s not here to manage behavior — he’s here to witness it.
To step into the emotional current. To feel the pulse of a pack reform itself without intervention.
Erik leads — but not from the front.
He leads by staying in time. In grief. In the weather. In stillness.
Many who once thought they were hiring a trainer eventually realized they were learning how to remember. How to move again.
Because Erik doesn’t fix your dog.
He shows you what it means to carry rhythm — even when it breaks.
Junha — The Working Shiba 🦊⚡🌿
Erik Gerner — Rhythm Listener & Field Founder 🎧🌱🧭
Erik Gerner — Rhythm Listener & Field Founder 🎧🌱🧭
Junha (pronounced “You-nah”) isn’t just a dog. She’s a pulse.
Since 2016, this 9-year-old sesame Shiba Inu has helped recalibrate entire packs — not by force, but by frequency. Her rhythm is subtle but unmistakable: steadying over-excited greetings, diffusing nervous energy, and setting a calm lead others instinctively follow.
Now entering
Junha (pronounced “You-nah”) isn’t just a dog. She’s a pulse.
Since 2016, this 9-year-old sesame Shiba Inu has helped recalibrate entire packs — not by force, but by frequency. Her rhythm is subtle but unmistakable: steadying over-excited greetings, diffusing nervous energy, and setting a calm lead others instinctively follow.
Now entering her elder phase, Junha has shifted into what we call a staggered pulse role — still present, still felt, but no longer always seen out front. Penny Lane carries the daily rhythm now, but Junha’s tone continues beneath the surface like a second heartbeat.
This is not a retirement.
This is rotation — rhythm moving through multiple carriers.
You may not see her correcting anymore, but the pack still checks for her silence.
You may not notice her on the trail, but you’ll feel her in the way the others move.
Junha hasn’t stepped away — she’s pulsing in a different register.
Legacy, in this rhythm, isn’t left behind. It’s echoed forward.
Penny Lane — The Next Working Shiba 🌱🐾✨
Penny Lane — The Next Working Shiba 🌱🐾✨
Penny Lane — The Next Working Shiba 🌱🐾✨
Penny Lane is a 5-year-old cream Shiba Inu, recently stepped into rhythm as Junha’s successor — not through replacement, but by resonance.
Though small in stature, Penny carries a big frequency. Originally a longtime client and friend of the pack, Penny joined us permanently last Thanksgiving. Since then, she’s moved from guest to guide —
Penny Lane is a 5-year-old cream Shiba Inu, recently stepped into rhythm as Junha’s successor — not through replacement, but by resonance.
Though small in stature, Penny carries a big frequency. Originally a longtime client and friend of the pack, Penny joined us permanently last Thanksgiving. Since then, she’s moved from guest to guide — stepping in where Junha now pulses from afar.
This is rhythm rotation in motion.
Her spunk is unmistakable — bright, kinetic, playful. Penny’s energy is contagious and coordinated. She leads not by dominance, but by momentum — her presence reawakens curiosity, accelerates trust, and brings youthful joy into the mix.
She is not filling Junha’s shoes.
She is continuing Junha’s current — in her own tempo.
Where Junha offered the still point, Penny provides the spark.
And together, across time and rhythm, they shape what it means to be The Working Shiba.
Your pup will feel it before you do.
Buster — The Steady Pulse ❤️🔥🐼🕰️
Penny Lane — The Next Working Shiba 🌱🐾✨
Penny Lane — The Next Working Shiba 🌱🐾✨
Buster is a 12-year-old black & tan Shiba Inu, a survivor who came to us seven years ago from the Tinton Falls Animal Shelter in Asbury Park, NJ. His story is one of transformation — carried forward by rhythm and the quiet strength of the Working Shiba lineage.
Living alongside Junha, Buster absorbed more than just walks — he absorbed rhyt
Buster is a 12-year-old black & tan Shiba Inu, a survivor who came to us seven years ago from the Tinton Falls Animal Shelter in Asbury Park, NJ. His story is one of transformation — carried forward by rhythm and the quiet strength of the Working Shiba lineage.
Living alongside Junha, Buster absorbed more than just walks — he absorbed rhythm itself. He’s evolved into a reliable and discerning leader, choosing his companions with care and favoring those who honor the pace of the walk.
Selective but steadfast, Buster’s presence is the pulse that steadies the pack, the trusted right paw of Junha’s rhythm.
We’re grateful to have Buster as an essential thread in the Working Shiba tapestry.
Dalton (2014–2025) 🌉🐾🕊️
Dalton wasn’t just part of the walk. He was the walk.
Dalton wasn’t the loudest.
He wasn’t the flashiest.
He didn’t need to be.
He was the steady one.
The pulse in the background.
The presence every dog adjusted to — without ever knowing they were adjusting.
A ten-year-old Husky mix with a golden heart and a tail that always pointed to the star
Dalton wasn’t just part of the walk. He was the walk.
Dalton wasn’t the loudest.
He wasn’t the flashiest.
He didn’t need to be.
He was the steady one.
The pulse in the background.
The presence every dog adjusted to — without ever knowing they were adjusting.
A ten-year-old Husky mix with a golden heart and a tail that always pointed to the stars, Dalton served as our grounding force, our quiet compass, and our emotional metronome.
He could calm the excitable without a sound. He could hold the leash line without tension. Dogs followed him not because he demanded it — but because he was already moving in the rhythm they needed.
He taught scared dogs how to breathe.
He taught wild dogs how to pace.
He taught all of us how to lead — not with volume, but with presence.
He didn’t walk dogs.
He walked with them — through their nerves, through their first days, through the long rhythm of becoming something braver than they were before.
Dalton worked sunup to sundown some days — more than a dozen dogs — and still managed to offer every single one of them the same calm, clear patience.
He never needed a title.
But if he had one, it would be this:
Honorary Founder. Eternal Member. DOM Bearer of The Working Shiba.
He passed on June 1st, 2025 — after one final perfect day.
Not a dramatic day. Not a big send-off. Just another day of quiet leadership, of walking the team, of making it all feel okay.
He didn’t say goodbye. He handed us the leash.
Dalton is gone — but his rhythm stayed.
It stayed in the dogs who now lead in his absence.
It stayed in the leash line that still holds its shape.
It stayed in us — in every handler, every walker, every quiet breath before the next step.
Where grief could collapse, we built a bridge.
And on that bridge, we still walk.
Thank you, Dalton.
We carry you now. 🐾✨
“Dalton didn’t say goodbye. He handed us the leash.”
In Rhythm, We Carry 🎵🚶♂️🕊️
Monrovia: The Artist Who Walked With Us
There are artists whose work you admire.
And then there are artists who hold the room for you when everything falls apart.
Monrovia didn’t know me personally.
But through his music, he knew the rhythm I needed — before I even did.
His songs weren’t just a soundtrack.
They were infrastructure.
When Dalton — my companion, co-leader, and quiet anchor — reached his final week, it was Monrovia’s music that gave structure to the silence.
It didn’t soften the grief. It tuned it.
Monrovia’s work held space for what words could not.
Each track became a step, a breath, a pause in the dance of loss.
This is not theory or story-telling.
It’s a living practice of carrying grief — not as a wound, but as motion.
If his music wasn’t there, the way I experienced Dalton’s final days would have been unrecognizable.
This is the Monrovia Boy Method.
Where grief becomes motion.
Where music walks beside you, holds the leash, and leads the way.
It’s a rhythm that doesn’t end when the song does.
📅 Walk Date: Friday, June 7th, 2025
🎵 Track: “To Watch the World Spin Without You” – Monrovia
The walk was quiet.
Not the peaceful kind — the kind where every step echoed what was missing.
Panda walked alone. PJ flailed. Blue moved like a shadow.
No one led.
But somehow, we still moved.
That was the method.
Not to replace. Not to fill.
Just to keep walking — with the silence.
That’s what Dalton taught us.
We didn’t collapse.
We carried.
This is how we grieve here.
Not by stopping.
But by learning how to walk again — with what we’ve lost. In Rhythm, We Carry 🎵🚶♂️🕊️
We have a bond too strong to be severed by absence