Some of the recent posts have brought up the question that many of us live with on a daily basis: how much training and attention do our dogs need every day? I get asked this a lot, and as I wrote in my essay in Tales of Two Species, I suspect that there's another fundamental question driving it (she says, speaking from experience). How much exercise, training and attention do our dogs need for us not to feel guilty? Fess up, don't you sometimes wonder if you are doing enough for your dog, and don't you sometimes feel guilty about not doing as much as you should? I am sure that many of the people reading this blog will say no, they don't feel guilty, and for good reason. I know that many of you take your dog out to classes several nights a week, take long walks in the country with Read More
Why Dogs are More Afraid of Men
Clients often tell me that their rescue dog must have been "beaten by a man" when the dog was younger, because the dog is afraid of men and not woman. However, people in the training and behavior field know that almost all shy dogs are more afraid of men than women, even if men have been nothing but kind to them their entire lives. We've always speculated that it had something to do with the way men walked (more assertively?) or their bigger chests, larger jaws, and/or deeper voices. But we've never really known for sure what it was--perhaps it is related to scent: obviously men smell different than woman, and it could be that just 'maleness' is more intimidating. A recent study reported in Scientific American Mind might have shed some light on this topic. (Actually, I read it and jumped Read More
Who Are We to Dogs?
This is an authentic question: ie, I don't have the answer. But it's a great question, posed by a seminar attendee, and also by someone who reads the blog. Do dogs think we are mutant dogs? Pathetic replicates who never grow out of our flat, puppy faces (we never grow muzzles) and can't use our mouths but make up for it endearingly with our cute, floppy paws? And surely they believe we can't smell--at all. My guy Jim speculated that just as people often assume that animals can't [fill-in-the-blanks: think in abstractions or strategize or be conscious) because they can't do it with the depth of skill that we do, perhaps dogs assume we can't smell anything at all, because we are so horrifically bad at it. On the one hand, you could argue that dogs behave toward us as they do other dogs: Read More