We're happy to introduce Karen London, Ph.D. as a guest blogger for The Other End of the Leash this week! Enjoy! If people go running by your home accompanied by their cats, geckos, ferrets, parrots, or rats, then you live in a very different neighborhood, perhaps even a different world, than I do. It’s just not part of our relationship with those species, however close we may be to them. Yet running is something that many of us share with our dogs, to the point that it’s almost cliché for people to swear that their dog is the best running partner they’ve ever had. There are so many reasons why people choose to run with their dogs beyond just knowing that their dogs need the exercise. Unlike most human running partners, dogs don’t ever have meetings that go late. They wouldn’t Read More
fMRI on Dogs: Too Wonderful!
When I was doing my PhD research in the 1980's I wanted to see how a dog's brain responded to different types of sounds before and after training. This was in the 1980's, and the only method available for animals was to do Evoked Potential tests, in which simple, tiny electrical sensors were glued to the scalp. This allowed one to measure activity in the brain in an extremely general way: What kind of brain waves does one see in the Temporal versus the Parietal lobe, for example, after hearing or seeing specific stimuli? Evoked Potential tests are logistically easy to do on adults: You shave tiny areas of the scalp, glue on the sensors, and ask the subject to stay still for a set period of time. The research subject mustn't move, because muscles move through electrical stimulation in Read More
Preventing Dog Bites
A million years ago, my first Border Collie Drift lept up and nipped a man's nose at the Wisconsin State Fair. Even though the man was clearly not injured, with virtually not even a red spot on his nose, I was shook up and appalled. He was furious. "Your dog attacked me!" Well, he did. Just because the man wasn't injured didn't mean he didn't feel attacked. And it didn't mean that I didn't feel horrible. Drift and I were about to perform in front of huge crowd by doing a sheep herding demo, and found ourselves jammed into a crowd against the building wall. The gentlemen in question charged up to Drift, grabbed his face in his hands, and yes, you guessed it, bent down to kiss Drift on the nose. It was the same exact context in which newscaster Kyle Dyer was bitten by a Dogo a few months Read More
Lure & Clicker Training to teach Sit – Advantages & Disadvantages
It makes me so happy to say that Tootsie is doing great. Right now she's sleeping in her crate beside my desk. The door is open, but she loves it there. The only places she likes as well are 1) being in bed with me, 2) being on the couch or 3) being by herself in the crate in the back of the car. She likes it so well in the car crate that I am actually having to train to leave it. I'm assuming this is baggage from her puppy mill days and that she feels most secure and comfortable in a small, confined space. She's progressed so well in so many ways: I'm especially taken with her flipping around mid-air when outside after I call her to come, ears flying like a furry dumbo, her open, happy mouth taking up half of her tiny little Cavalier head. As I mentioned in an earlier post, now that Read More
Don’t waste calories!
Well, this could be a blog about my as-yet-to-be-successful attempts to lose 10 pounds, but more on point, it's a discussion about the value of a dog's dinner in training and behavior modification. I am inspired to write this after seeing Kathy Sdao's seminar last January in Orlando, and reading her new book, Plenty in Life is Free. It's a really good book, in which her primary point is that the so-often-recommended "NILIF" (Nothing in Life is Free) programs recommended are based on a flawed assumption, and should be replaced with using Operant Conditioning to teach the behavior we want. I say "Here Here!" to that. It's just another version of dominance theory, and as Kathy argues, it can have a negative effect on the relationship between a dog and its owner. What I especially like Read More
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