Search Results: Dog Behavior

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While feeling a bit reflective, and thinking about what to write today, I went into the archives to see what I’d written this month ten years ago. I ran into this post, which I’d forgotten about, and decided it deserved to come out of moth balls, like some Christmas tree decorations stashed in the back…

The celebration of July 4th and all things loud and noisy has already begun here in Wisconsin. And so have the thunderstorms. We’ve had at least three major thunderstorms so far, and no doubt more are to come. That’s why the next section summarizes a post from 2009 with specifics about helping noise phobic dogs:…

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…

I’ve been to a lot of dog-related seminars, and, at every one, the female/male ratio is something like 90/10. Or 95/5. I thought it would be different at the Im-PECK-able seminar put on by K9 Behavior Consortium, thinking of all the guys I’ve run into over the years with law enforcement dogs, especially drug and…

Dogs play more together when being watched, a research result I’ve been fascinated by since it came out in 2021. Maggie, playing with Skip in the photo above, is the poster child for this phenomenon. She’ll stop, look at me, pointedly. Why? We all know I’m just guessing, but I get the distinct impression that…

Zazie Todd, the author of Wag, The Science of Making Your Dog Happy, has already made many contributions to the world of animal behavior and dog training. She has her own blog (which I never miss), Companion Animal Psychology, and a column in Psychology Today, “Fellow Creatures“. One of the things I like about her…

When clients, eyes shining, would tell me how smart their dog was, I’d often respond: “I’m so sorry.” Of course, I said it with a big smile and we all laughed about it, but the truth is, smart isn’t always what we want. Most of us want dogs who are “smart” in that they learn…

Decoding Your Dog is a new book from the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, edited by D. Horowitz and J. Ciribassi, and it has a lot going for it. I have some quibbles too, but let’s start with the good news. Without question the best part of the book is its continual reminder to dog…

Voted “Best Soft-Cover Guide of 2011” by the Dog Writer’s Association of America, Love Has No Age Limit tells you everything you need to know about welcoming an adolescent or adult dog into your family. We all know that older dogs present their own special joys and challenges; let this easy- to-read book turn your…

In my last post I mentioned that Skip was being given couch privileges, but he didn’t feel quite comfortable up there when first allowed. Here’s the photo I took several weeks ago: It’s pretty clear who was the most comfortable. This photograph, along with a post on my Facebook page, led to some comments about…

Looking for some good news? Well here it is: Dr. Karen London’s new book, Treat Everyone Like a Dog, is out, and it’s fantastic. Here’s what Ken Ramirez says about it–“My only complaint: I wish I had written it!” When Ken says that, it’s time to pay attention. Here’s from the Foreward that I was…

Getting stung by wasps led me to learn about all kinds of “non-traditional” treatments, including an application of the common weed, plantain. (I wish I’d tried it; one of our readers swore by it, and later I learned about its medicinal properties. Impressive.) We have plantain everywhere here on the farm, and next time I…

We all know that family dog trainers don’t train dogs, they train people. As I tease my veterinarian friends, our job is harder, because we have to train our clients to do the equivalent of the surgery themselves. And we all know that we, as a species, can be a bit challenging to train. Not…

A few months ago I got an email from someone with a great question: Would it distress a dog to have his former owner come visit? I’ve been mulling on it ever since, and my answer, of course, is It Depends. But that leads to the question, “Depends on what?” Although I’m only speculating, I…

Have you listened to any CAABChats lately? Hosted by PhD’s Suzanne Hetts and Dan Estep, a CAABChat is “A professional discussion among Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists (and occasionally invited others) about timely, useful, controversial and foundational topics in the field of pet behavior and training.” The monthly podcasts are free if watched in real time…

Yeah well, this is something I know well, except, uh… how come it took me 2 years to figure it out with my own dog? Sigh. Here’s the back story: As many of you know, my 3 year old BC, Willie, is both a joy and a challenge. He’s joyful, incredibly responsive, the perfect dog…

A few weeks ago Maggie, aka Princess Margaret, came back after a play session with a tiny limp. Well, damn, I thought, I hope this isn’t serious. Her limp disappeared the next day, and play sessions with Skip and her favorite toy were back on the agenda after one more day of “just to be…

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…

I’m between speaking at Midwest Vet Med Conference in Ohio and speaking at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior in Tucson. I only had time to fly in and out at the Vet Conference, wish I would have had more time to go to some of the other behavior talks. Happily, in Tucson I…

I love the Christmas holidays. However, like many others, I sometimes struggle to avoid them feeling like one long TO DO list from hell, instead of the celebration of love and light that they can be. The trick for me is to intentional every day. What makes me happy? What makes the people and other…

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…

“Three days, three weeks, three months.” That’s the mantra of many dog trainers and behaviorists, when welcoming a new dog into their household. The “magic of threes” is especially relevant when adopting an adolescent or adult dog into your home. Dogs, especially non-puppies, are often in a bit of shock for the first three days…

First, watch the video of Katie’s young Leo trying to get an older Mastiff, Herk, to play. (You’ll know who is who, trust me!) Second, take a minute to wipe the tears from your eyes because you were laughing so hard. Third, think about all the ways you’ve seen dogs try to initiate play with…

                                (Excuse me, there’s a growth on your head. Is it dangerous?) Recently I read an article in Bark Magazine titled “8 Things We Do That Really Confuse Our Dogs.” Written by Melissa Starling and Paul McGreevy, (and originally published in The Conversation), the authors lists several points to which I say Hear Hear! (And…

This is a great question, one that none of us really know the answer to. Of course, it actually includes several questions: Do dogs learn to associate a smile with good things? Or a frown? And/or are dogs inherently able to “read” our faces because their expressions are so like our own? Or, do none…

There was quite the dust up on Twitter last week about a blog in Psychology Today by Nathan Lents, titled Dogs Apologize Better Than Some Humans. Skipping the observation that humans have a lot more to apologize for than dogs do, (clown horror movies come to mind), Lents addresses the “guilty look” of dogs and…

    I don’t know about you, but I seem to keep getting busier and busier, while time seems to be speeding up. If this also describes you, and you are feeling pressed for the time and energy to do things like read a book review, I’ll save you some trouble: Buy this book. Then…

  Here’s Hailey, who was one of the demo dogs in Pittsburgh a few  weeks ago. Crystal is fostering Hailey, and had only had her for about a month before the seminar, and we were both concerned that her general arousal levels might make the seminar too much of a challenge for her. As it…

This blog is inspired by Willie, and all dogs who are recovering from injury or surgery, who are on total exercise restriction programs. Willie spends about 20 to 22 hours a day in a crate, 1 to 1.5 hours doing passive physical therapy and the rest lying down beside me getting his belly rubbed. He…

We need a little extra comfort, sometimes, don’t we? I find myself in that situation now, and am especially grateful not just for Jim, but also for Maggie and Skip. They are both super cuddly dogs, and moment by moment, I take comfort from the touch of their fur, the rhythm of their beating hearts.…

I shouldn’t have been surprised at the depth of my grief when Willie died. After all, I’m the one who wrote about his uncle that “I imagine his death as if someone took the oxygen out of the air and I was supposed to live without it”. Every week I post comments from people who…

It’s a wonderful thing to hold a book you wrote in your hand, long after the writing and the editing and the discussions with the publishers about cover photos and who to ask for quotes on the back… My new book, Tales of Two Species: Loving and Living with Dogs just came from the printers,…

Years ago I saw a client whose dog, let’s call him Charlie, entered the room with a neck twisted slightly to the side. It wasn’t extreme, but it was obvious, if you paid attention to the way the dog moved. The owners had brought the dog in because after six years of being a docile…

Two more posts about play from presentations at APDT: this one about play between people and dogs, and a post coming on Friday regarding Karen London’s presentation on using play to treat aggression-related behavior problems. I spoke in the afternoon about play between people and dogs. It’s a rich topic, with many nuances and complexities,…

Surely our mutual love of play is one of the reasons that dogs and people get along so well. As Karen London and I write in Play Together, Stay Together, “Play is powerful stuff. It influences so many things, including development, motivation, emotions, physiology, communication and behavior. Wow! That’s an impressive list.” After years working…

Wow. I just listened to the first episode of Season Four of Michael Shikashio‘s podcast, The Bitey End of the Dog. He interviews a range of great thinkers related to canine aggression in his podcast, including, this season, Karen London and Mark Beckoff. But the first episode was with me, focusing on trauma in dogs.…

I’m working on my Intro for APDT’s symposium on Canine Cognition, and one of the hot topics right now is why dogs seem to be better able to interpret a pointing gesture than are wolves or chimps. Various research projects (see below) have shown that dogs go directly toward food hidden under one of two…

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)…

We’ve been in a conversation about helping others (and ourselves) if and when we get frustrated by our dogs. It’s been a great one, thanks for all your comments. I thought of something important that I haven’t mentioned yet, and I thought it deserved it’s own forum. It seems to me that an important part…

With apologies for the change in topics, I just have to respond to a comment on my last post, and to the hundreds of comments I’ve heard over the last 20 + years, about the guilt associated with putting a dog down. It is always wrenching, heart-breaking to euthanize a beloved dog, but taking a…

VIDEOS ABOUT A DOG’S FEAR OF PEOPLE OR OTHER DOGS Counter Conditioning for Reactivity to People   Example of “Watch” with Willie Willie loves a good game of tug as positive reinforcement for checking in with Trisha.   How to Stop an Approaching Dog in an Emergency Most of us have unfortunately been in a…

One of the challenges for those interested in dog behavior is keeping up with current research. Access to journal articles can require prohibitively expensive subscriptions or membership in a research institution with an extensive library system. That’s why open access journals, like Plos One are so valuable, and why I’m grateful to Monique Udell, the…

I originally called this post “Barbie’s Not Always a Nice Girl,” but then I thought about what the title would look like on Google and the kind of people who’d click on it. Hmm, not really my “brand,” as they say. I thought though, that you’d be interested in yet another interaction between Barbie, my…

As you know if you’ve been following the blog, 1/2 the folks who went to Kenya continued on to Botswana. We all knew that seeing Wild Dogs wasn’t a guarantee, but we had high hopes because we were going where and when our chances were highest. (And no, in response to one comment, there are…

  During the pandemic, my vet clinic didn’t allow owners inside. We handed our dogs off to a Vet Tech, and stood outside waiting in the snow, or the rain, or the sun, and paced around the parking lot. We sat in the car and checked our phones. One vet told me some clients drove…

Dr. Karen London, in a reprinted article in Bark Magazine, raised some interesting questions about the meaning of different patterns of raised hackles, or piloerection, in dogs. First off, note that many people associate piloerection with aggression, well illustrated in my search for photos of dogs with raised hackles in a commercial photo site: All…

I’ve been looking forward to receiving my copy of Tim Lewis’s new book, The Biology of Dogs: From Gonads Through Guts to Ganglia for a few weeks now, given all the buzz it has generated. And wow. I have not been disappointed. Lewis is a professor of biology at the University of St. Thomas (MN),…

“One’s Nose is Never So Happy…” has nothing to do with dogs, except for the nose part. Here’s the full quote: “It has been observed that one’s nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid…

I had an entirely different blog written and about to be posted, but there’s a swirl of discussion going on right now about an article that came out in Time Magazine by Carl Zimmer about “friendships” in animals. He has lots of good information from researchers who argue that true friendships are formed in many…