Search Results: Dog Behavior

Meet Sam. He’s a 41/2 year old Border Collie, adopted by Roberta K from a shelter in rural Virginia at the age of one. He’d spent his first year of life in a crate. It seems the elderly couple who purchased him, one wheelchair bound,  found him “too much to handle.” (A pause here for…

I can’t resist repeating a post from 2012 on repeating ourselves. (I know, the irony!) It’s such an important and interesting issue, given how often our communication must confuse our dogs, and how tiring it must be for them to try to figure us out. From March, 2012: A blog reader asked a great question…

It’s Women’s History Month, and I’ve been thinking about the women in science who have had a significant effect on our understanding of animal behavior, and how it might relate to canine behavior and training. Of course, my first thoughts are of the “Trimates,” referencing Jane Goodall (chimps), Dian Fossey (gorillas), and Biruté Galdikas (orangutans),…

I’m sure you’ve never been in a position to feel foolish while training or performing with your dog. What’s that? Perhaps just once, you’ve found yourself red-faced and fighting the flames of humiliation while working with your dog? If you’re anything like me, you actually have a multitude of such stories, and some of them…

Question: Is there ever enough time to read? Answer: No. I read every night and every morning at a minimum, and if I ever had a genie rise out of a bottle and ask me for one wish, I’d ask for another hour or two of reading time in every day. (And long, pretty legs…

I’ll be working on a post about social status and dog training this week, keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, something happened on Saturday that related to our discussion about fears . . . I mentioned last week that Willie has become fearful of being in the bedroom with me at night. He is better, although…

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on the cue “Get Back,” which is one of my favorites because it is so useful in so many contexts. Katie Martz, Communications Coordinator here at PMcC, video taped Willie getting back in a variety of contexts, and we noticed that every time I said “Get Back”…

If you’re a professional dog trainer, you’ve repeated “never repeat a command” countless times. Surely it’s one of life’s greatest ironies. I’ve said it myself many a time, and I’ve written about how hard it is to follow that advice. How easily the second “Sit” comes after the first one, yes? I’ve gotten pretty good…

A recent comment from blog readers brought up a fascinating issue. I’ll just introduce it here, and then continue delving into it as time goes on. Here’s the question: Is it possible that dogs who appear to be super submissive are, uh…, not? I think the answer is yes. I say ‘yes’ because I think…

I am not sure if the title is more reminiscent of canid communication or some strange, alien kind of cookies, but let’s go with the former. I’m writing this post because I’d love your interpretation of 3 canid behaviors that we’ve been discussing in the comments on one of my posts. I had mentioned a…

Move over Rico. Have you heard about the new article out in Beh’l Processes about a BC named Chaser who has not only learned names for 1022 objects, but has shown that she distinguishes between verbs and nouns? There’s more to this study, but let me start with the noun/verb issue. This is an especially…

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I welcomed the onset of winter in November. Summer time is busy for me, too busy on occasion. Dog trialing and gardening come at the same time of the year in the Midwest, and so those hobbies, along with work and all the rest of life, mean the days are still too short, no matter…

Willie and Maggie usually play tug games every morning before I begin working, but Willie had a tooth removed, so he is working on some new tricks. Maggie needs to stay in good condition and needs to run hard, at least twice a day, so we are playing fetch together in the morning. After just…

I’m sitting at La Guardia airport, surrounded by rows of passengers-to-be, their stolid baggage waiting by their sides like silent beasts of burden, their agile mobile phones hard at work. I’m on my way home from the Green Chimneys 2017  Conference on Human Animal Interactions and here’s my challenge: What part of the conference do…

First off, thanks to everyone at All About Dogs and all the participants of the seminar in Woodbridge, VA. Every audience has a personality all its own (anyone every done temperament tests on audiences?), and this group was a delight from beginning to end. About 150 people and I spent the weekend in an inquiry…

Skip, Skipperdee, Skipperdeedodah, came to the farm in February of 2020. He’d never been in a house as far as I can tell, or perhaps, even a building. I had to put him in fancy pants because he saw no reason not to lift his leg in the house. He would stop instantly when I…

I have read your excellent comments with great interest, thank you all so much for writing. I do agree that in many ways it is far too simplistic to sort the world into two groups as I did in my earlier post. I suspect that it’s easy to oversimplify when you are frustrated, and truth…

This week, it’s all about the farm: (Next week I’ll write a full report of the talks at the Animal Behavior Society 2013 Meeting in Boulder. It was great, lots to tell you about!) [I should mention here that I just changed that last sentence on 8-8, after a call from Jim who noticed I…

I was working on my new book, coming out from Dogwise in early November, and found a section that relates, I suspect, to the cancellation of my radio show, Calling All Pets. The book, coming out from Dogwise, (Tales of Two Species) is a collection of my columns from Bark magazine. One of them is…

Of course! It seems like a simple question, but as is often the case, our big, complicated brains allow us to add nuance to the answer. I’ve gone on record as arguing that yes indeed, mammals like dogs and horses can be happy, how could they not be? Feeling good is a way for the…

A study on training frequency by Meyer and Ladewig (Applied Animal Behavior Science 2008) is getting some attention lately, and I thought it’d be useful to mention it here. It’s a great example of how a ‘rose is a rose is a rose…’ (but not.) Cutting to the bottom line, the authors found that dogs…

We’ve been told (and I’ve repeated in my books ) that it takes about 21 to 28 days to learn a new habit. That doesn’t sound like too long a time, but the research also found that people tend to drop out a new behavior after about 2 weeks if they don’t go out of…

Happiness can be elusive. I first added a variety of phrases starting with “especially when . . . ,” but decided that those four words were enough. No one can be happy all the time, but who doesn’t want to be happy at least part of every day? Surely the same is true of our…

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Location. Location. Location. Or, perhaps, environment, environment, environment. That’s one of the keys to making your cat(s) truly happy, as author Zazie Todd, PhD, told me in an interview we did last week about her excellent new book Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. In a way, it’s simple: Understand cats, and act…

On our trip to northern Minnesota and my talk at the gorgeous Virginia Public Library (thank you for your gracious reception!) Jim and I stopped at the International Wolf Center in Ely. Lucky us, we just happened to arrive when the “enrichment” exercise was the delivery of a rack of ribs and a beaver. A…

A reader asked for an update about Will and Sushi, so I thought it was time to fill you in on how it is going. I’m happy to report that things are going extremely well. (Whew!) The entire story would be a chapter in a book (and probably will be!), but here’s the summary: Problem:…

When do you intervene when your dog’s play becomes borderline? We all know that there is no simple answer to this question. (Except, of course… “It depends.”) I wrote extensively on this topic in May. However, the evolving relationship between Maggie and Willie continues to keep the question relevant on a daily basis. You might…

I’m deep in “speech preparation” tunnel, working sun up to sun down on my presentations about play at APDT next week. It’s a lot of work, but gratifying. Play is such an interesting topic, I wish I could spend a few months doing nothing but learning, thinking and writing about it. One of the most…

On Friday I asked you what you thought was going on here, at least as best one could tell from a still photograph. I’m the first to agree it’s hard to say much from one brief moment in time, but it’s a great exercise nonetheless. It helps us all focus our attention and generate hypothesis…

Thanks to all of you who commented on the saga of Willie and Sushi. (And for those of you who haven’t read the last post, my biggest training/behavior challenge at the moment is Willie’s obsessive herding/stalking of my cat Sushi. I have started a new paradigm, which is to quietly and politely ask him to…

Like many people, I’m classically conditioned to associate “New Year’s Resolutions” with broad, generic and doomed-to-fail pronouncements, like “I’ll be healthier!”  “I’ll lose 20 pounds!”  “I’ll be an all around better person!” “I’ll kind and generous to everyone I meet!” I made my share of impossible resolutions in decades past, and like most of them,…

What would we do without our veterinarians and vet techs?? Not to mention everyone else who helps us keep our companion animals as healthy as we can. This week I’m celebrating Veterinary Appreciation Day and I hope you’ll join me. I’ll admit to being a bit jaded at all the “special days” we hear about…

Midwesterners like me are pretty obedient. Think of us as the golden retrievers of the country. Like most, I’ve been sheltering for a month, indulging in take out only once a week, and washing my hands raw. But the CDC’s “don’t touch your face” instruction? Total fail. Granted, I have a new-found awareness of how…

    I always have the same reactions after seeing Ken Ramirez speak or watching him train. One: He is an astoundingly good animal trainer, possibly the best I’ve ever seen. Two: I myself am, by comparison, completely incompetent. Three: I can’t wait to go home and train everything. Or anything. Right away. Because I…

 A recently published study has shown that cats are attracted to music that was specifically designed for them. This is important work, given all the claims that are made about effect of music “designed for” dogs and cats. Although there are several interesting studies this issue, the studies have traditionally compared different types of musical…

Here is a fantastic video for our analysis, provided by dog trainer and blogger, Aki Yamaguchi, or “BCNerd” (love the name!). In it you’ll see three dogs, one an adolescent with the typical over enthusiasm for his age. There’s lots I can’t wait to say about what is going on here, but I’m going to…

Good news. Mostly. Will has recovered from his 5 + hour root canal, but I remain a tad tweaked about the definition of a “fully functional tooth.” I choose the root canal for Will instead of an extraction because the vet specialist said it would leave Will with a full set of “fully functional teeth.”…

Hard to imagine we’re on our way to Africa tomorrow. Even though it’s my fourth trip, going to Africa still seems like something I could only dream about, never really do. Of course, the only dreaming at this point is of things I might have forgotten, and worries about leaving the dogs and the sheep.…

I’m leading another safari in Kenya and Botswana this August. Wanna come? It probably will be my last. The first time I went to Africa to lead an animal-behavior-focused safari, I cautioned the participants the day we arrived that we weren’t going to see what we usually see on a nature special on television. “What…

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I’m so curious what you think of what’s happening in this video. As you can see, it’s label suggests that the dam is “teaching her puppies to be calm.”        (Video from the YouTube channel of Sent from Heaven) What I’m especially interested in is the reaction I got when I posted this on Facebook…

Last week I savored your responses to my Giving Thanks post. No matter how big or how small, it’s good for us, and those around us, to let gratitude soothe our souls. Today, I’m focusing on giving thanks through the “Giving” part. It’s Giving Tuesday, and although, like me, you mighty be feeling a tad…

Aubrey Fine’s new book on AAT just came out, Handbook on Animal-Assisted Therapy, and I am pleasantly surprised at how much of general interest is in it. If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile you might remember that Aubrey and I wrote a chapter for it together on “what therapists need to understand about…

I just finished Everett’s book Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes, and a more thought-provoking book I can’t imagine. As I mentioned in my earlier blog, the author spent much of his life over the last 30 years with a hunter-gatherer tribe, the Piraha, in the Amazon basin. Everett began his work as a missionary and…

We’ve been talking about secondary reinforcers and markers, and the good question has come up about the difference between them. On the one hand, we know that a click or a “yes” can be used to communicate to a dog that a specific behavior is what is about to be reinforced. Clicking or saying “yes”…

While we’re on the subject of books (and ooooh, I love the suggestions from so many of you about books you have loved. Oh boy, can’t wait to check them out. . .), have you seen Sophia Yin’s Low Stress Handling, Restraint & Beh Modification of Dogs and Cats? This is not a cheap book,…

I often begin my day writing about what I am thankful for, but this time of year I like to put that gratitude out into the universe. However, this time I’m going to take a page from one of my favorite local columnists, John Roach, who writes for Madison Magazine. Recently he wrote about what…

Willie, Maggie and I spent the last three days in sheepdog heaven at a Patrick Shannahan clinic hosted by Laura Wentz. Imagine watching brilliant dogs work white wooly sheep framed by the reds and oranges of fall in the midwest. Sweet. (And okay, a tad chilly when the wind came up.) I brought the camera…