Fúinn
Dogs don’t judge your fada placement
That’s the whole insight. A dog is the lowest-stakes possible audience for practising a minority language you might be self-conscious about — and dog-walking is already a recurring, social, outdoor habit.
Teach Your Dog Irish was started by Catherine O’Beirn to fuse two things worth growing: local communities of dog and nature lovers, and informal, no-pressure use of the Irish language. Teaching your dog a few basic commands in Irish is the fun, no-stakes way in — it funnels naturally into the real goal, group walks where a bit of Irish gets spoken along the way.
The nearest precedent isn’t a language-learning app — it’s the Pop-up Gaeltacht movement: informal Irish-speaking socials, started in Dublin in 2017, built explicitly as a reaction against the pressured “conversation circle” format, and open to speakers of every ability. We’re borrowing that tone and transplanting it onto a walking trail.
We’re starting in Galway/Connemara — one of the strongest-surviving Gaeltacht regions in Ireland, where Irish is already a living, daily-use language rather than a symbolic revival target. That shapes the site directly: the pronunciation audio is Catherine’s own recordings in Gaeltacht Chonnacht (Connacht Irish), and the trail and walk directory starts local before it goes anywhere else.
Principles
What we won't compromise on
The dog is the reason you show up.
The Irish is what happens while you're there. If the site ever feels like a language course that happens to mention dogs, it has drifted from the point.
No fluency gate, ever.
Nobody should feel they need permission or a minimum level of Irish to take part. Non-Irish speakers are heartily welcome — that's not a footnote, it's load-bearing.
Repetition without homework.
Saying “suí” to your dog ten times a day is more language exposure than a weekly class, and it doesn't feel like studying. We prefer that everywhere we can.
Community and nature connection are the point, not a funnel.
Dog walking and Irish-language use are both things worth doing on their own — this site isn't a language app with a dog-walk acquisition channel bolted on.
Local and human-led.
The best version of this scales through people running their own local walk, not a single centrally programmed calendar. Our job is to make starting and finding a group easy.