Search Results: Away To Me

It’s Sunday of Labor Day Weekend and Maggie is exuberant. Her face is glowing. She’s leaping onto her hind feet and pirouetting in a half circle like a ballet dancer while looking into my eyes. If she’s not actually smiling, she’s doing a perfect imitation of a slap-happy human grin. We’d just done our first…

I’m just back from the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. I was one of several speakers discussing the Human/Animal Bond at NIH’s STEP Forum, a monthly meeting for all NIH staff designed to educate staff about issues relating to science in the public health. It was very much worth the travel; the talks…

First, not to bury the lead–the book Considerations for the City Dog is a great book. I’ll explain more about that later in this post, but let me start by describing how I learned about the book: In October 2015 my office got a call from the local post office. “You have to get down…

How many times have you heard or said “Always end a training session on a good note?” I heard it repeatedly when I first went into the field and said it myself, until I saw how much trouble it could cause a dog and his handler. I got to thinking about this training aphorism when…

Those things go together, right? Well, they did this weekend. Lucky me to discover this Gray Tree Frog hiding out in the day lilies. They are small, can take on the color of the substrate they’re on, and are only noticed if you are looking closely. Every time I find one in the garden it’s…

We’re just back from a great, small trial in Minnesota at the home of Janis and Dan Reuter. A heartfelt thanks to them for all the work it takes to put on a trial, especially at a farm only five months old. Not to mention the stamina of Robin Reasoner for setting out all day…

I’m on way to Bethesda MD to speak at NIH at a forum about the Human-Animal Bond, I’ll write about the other speaker’s talks when I get back later in the week. The talks promise to be very, very interesting. But today I wanted to alert those of you who are interested in animal behavior…

It rained two and a half inches yesterday, most of it in a brief rain-slashing, wind-moaning storm that was so intense that the dogs and I sat on the couch looking out the window in a state of disbelief. I believe at one point I said “Holy S*^#!” It reminded me of the night I…

Do you take the time to write down what you are grateful for on a regular basis? I’ve been doing it for years, and I can attest that it’s one of the most constructive things I’ve ever done. Far beyond a superficial exercise, it can help to repair a broken psyche, or, in some cases,…

Thanks for your comments with examples of what looks like imitation in dogs and cats. I was especially intrigued by the cat stories, having had a cat myself who did a perfect imitation of a herding Border Collie after watching me work Luke every day. Luke and I would drive the sheep up the hill…

Book tours can be tiring, but there’s nothing like being inspired by the work of the people of The Penn Vet Working Dog Center in Philadelphia.  I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon there–basically an exercise in intellectual and emotional rapture. In general, here’s what they do: “Our goal is to increase collaborative research,…

In 2006, Willie who came to us as an eight-week old puppy who behaved as if he’d served three tours in Afghanistan, and came back with the canine version of PTSD. The title of The Education of Will is in part based on his name. In the book I talk about how all mammals can…

I spent three years writing The Education of Will before deciding that I would go ahead and publish it. I wrote and wrote and wrote for myself, as a well-documented way to resolve baggage from my past and move on. I had wanted to try writing fiction, but got discouraged by editors and agents who…

The impetus for this topic came from an article I sent out on Facebook on how to behave around a service dog. The article made many good points about respecting the space around a working service dog and his/her human, but I didn’t notice that it came with a photograph of a dog wearing a…

I’ve had a lot of questions lately about resource guarding. I’m not sure why–dogs stuck together inside because of the weather? A butterfly flapping its wings in China? Who knows. But I thought it was a good time to revisit a post I wrote in 2014 about dogs who guard resources from other dogs. Here…

We’re still all about toys at the office, given the boxes and boxes of them that arrived last week. And there’s nothing like having a new puppy in the house to get you back to thinking about toys! A great happy surprise has been that the toy we were afraid would live on our shelves…

Willie, Maggie and I spent the last three days in sheepdog heaven at a Patrick Shannahan clinic, reveling in fall colors, great dogs, good company and the always brilliant advice of Patrick. I love working with him for his benevolence, his clear explanations and his gentle insistence that our dogs do what’s right without us…

What do you think of when you hear the phrase “human-animal bond”? I suspect, for most of us, our first thought is our relationship with our dogs.  Which makes sense, given the depth of our connection with the animals that we have taken into our home and hearts like no other. However, Philip Tedeschi, Director…

Dr. Stanley Coren, psychologist and blogger for Psychology Today, recently discussed his research on the observation that dogs, in general, don’t like to be hugged. Predictably, the fur hit the fan. As I found when I went on tour for The Other End of the Leash, some people do not appreciate that their dog might…

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:…

While I’m in Arizona at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior (try saying that fast!), I thought it would be useful to repeat this article (slightly modified) and video on stopping an unwanted approach from an unfamiliar dog. So many of us have dogs who are uncomfortable meeting other dogs when on leash, so…

Last week I spent five days at Natural Encounters in their Professional Training Workshop hosted and run by Steve Martin and Dr. Susan Friedman. I watched crows and parrots learning new behaviors so fast that my head spun. The trainers there are so good they could train a flock of parrots to build a shopping…

This seems like a good question to begin a new year together in our inquiry about human/animal relationships. I’ve been engaged, as so many others are at this time of year, in writing out my goals for 2016. Some are personal, some are professional, and many, not surprisingly, relate to my dogs. I spent a…

It’s been a few days since the bombing in Paris, and yet, of course, it still resides, like a black tumor, inside of my psyche. First, I want to say that I am so so sorry–to everyone directly involved, and to those indirectly involved and to the entire world community that is trying to find…

Someone once told me that her dog, Barney, was clearly anxious because she “lip licked” every time she asked him to sit or lie down. That’s seemed to be a reasonable conclusion, except that the dog’s tongue always flicked out laterally to sop up a stream of drool every time he heard the cue. I…

First, and most importantly, I need to apologize to Willie. I needed a photograph for this blog and I exploited Willie to get it. While Maggie played with a neighbor’s dog, went on a long walk in the woods, and worked sheep at a friend’s, Willie got to 1) lie on the rug and 2)…

Justin was a six-year old boy who had spent five years, from age one to age six, in a kennel. His caretaker was not intentionally cruel, but was cognitively challenged, and had no idea how to raise a child. He felt it was best to care for him as he did his dogs. Justin and…

Hey, why not? Okay, I know, really I do. It costs a fortune to get there, no way around it. But hey, I’m going to do a two-day seminar outside of Auckland on November 27th and 28th, of this year, and what better excuse to take the trip of a lifetime? Besides, the air fare…