Last week a dear friend brought her teenage Bernedoodle, Leo, over to meet Skip and Maggie. Leo was like Sheldon at a Comic Con Convention (can you tell I've been watching Big Bang Theory?)--all enthusiasm and no social finesse. This is Maggie after he tried to mount her head. (Please supply caption.) In spite of his enthusiasm, Leo is a dear, sweet dog, but his owner asked for some advice about teaching him to come when called off their home territory when he is highly distracted. We did a little work, and he'll be over again soon, but he got me thinking about how recall training isn't as simple as it often feels. I was about to write a new post on the topic, and then remembered I've done that already. I wrote a post in August of 2017, and I offer it to you here, with a few minor Read More
Book Reviews: Who’s a Good Dog? & Urban Sheepdogs
I don't pretend to be able to keep up with all the dog/animal behavior books being published right now, but two books got my attention this week that I thought you might find interesting. In some ways, they couldn't be much different from each other. Who's a Good Dog? And How to Be A Better Human, by Jessica Pierce, is a beautifully-produced book published by The University of Chicago Press, has perhaps the greatest title and cover of any dog-related book I've seen in a long time, and has a nine-page index. Urban Sheepdog: Understanding Your Herding Breed, by Emily Priestley, is published by . . . ? (All it says is Made in the USA, Monee, IL). It is a small, almost booklet-size book, presumably published Read More
Winter Get Away in Jamaica
We're just back from a week in Jamaica. Good to go, good to be home. Usually winter trips around here are motivated by a desire to escape the cold. Not this time, I think it was in the 50's when we left. We basically had about two weeks of real winter--very cold, lots of snow--but before and after it's been like living in three month-long November, a month known for gray skies and lots of mud. Yuck. Because of that, it was still wonderful to get away, mostly to glory in bright colors-Turquoise! Orange! Green!, and to escape the relentless To Do list that exists for all of us. Mine is especially, uh, challenging now. Mix my Epstein Barr/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with ADHD, and interesting things happen. I am grateful to my bones that we were able to get away. Here is the scene that Read More
Dark Eyes in Dogs, or Light? (& Other Preferences About Looks)
I just read a fascinating article in the Royal Society Open Journal finding that dark-eyed dogs were rated friendlier and less mature than light-eyed dogs by people viewing photos of just their eyes and muzzle. It included dogs of multiple breeds, whose images had eyes that had been both darkened and lightened (toward yellow, not blue as above) by the researchers. (If you're interested in the evolution of eyes in dogs and primates, in relation to social communication, you'd enjoy reading the entire article.) The authors, noting that wolves have yellow eyes while most domestic dogs have significantly darker eyes, speculate that selectionary pressures might account for the difference. Besides finding the article interesting in its own right, it got me thinking about preferences that Read More
How Dog Training and Editing are the Same.
Continuing my ability to relate just about everything in the world to dog training, I offer you some thoughts about how good editing is like good dog training. For example, here is a typical editing progression, starting with: "I really think that dog is too hot to keep working." Eeeps, delete the "really": "I think that dog is too hot to keep working." Still, too many words: "That dog is too hot to keep working." Better. You get the idea. Less is more. The word "really" adds nothing but noise. The concept "I think" is implied without it being stated. Who else is thinking it if you wrote it? You could even cut the sentence down to "That dog is too hot." (But, you have to leave in the "too," right?) No one says "less is better" than Sol Read More
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