Here we are in Amboseli. 9 pm, long day, ending with dinner watching gazelles, zebra and wildebeest walking past the dining room. went on game drive in evening, found pride of 9 lions:2 black maned males, 2 cubs and 5 females. some of us saw them very closely, my van not right next to the van, but still amazing. cubs playing on top of mom, males looking bored and regal. all getting ready for nightly hunt. Is just as wonderful as you would hope. People so kind, country astounding--vast and huge and full of contrasts. Dry sand dirt and electric red robes of Maasai. Is sadness too--terrible drought causing suffering to people and animals alike. Maize crop has failed for people. Grass gone for grazers, so hippos and zebra suffering terribly. Browsers like giraffe and Kudu antelop doing much Read More
Archives for August 2009
Dog Play DVD Available!
Wheeeee, the new 1/2 day seminar on play that I did in California a few weeks ago is out now on DVD, thanks to lots of hard work by Alta at Tawzer Videos. You can learn more about Dog Play on my website, but here's the summary: The seminar focused on three aspects of canine play: 1) The Natural History of Play: What IS play after all? Who plays and Why? (Those questions turn out to be much more complicated than you might think and have all kinds of interesting implications for us and our dogs!) 2) Play Between Dogs: What do we know about the development of play in dogs? The seminar includes new research out of Barbara Smut's lab in Michigan about the development of play in dogs and what is "natural" and what is not. It also includes an in-depth discussion, with lots of videos, about Read More
Dogs and Kids
WRITTEN MID-JULY, POSTED WHILE I'M IN AFRICA: I recently spent three evenings with Jim's son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter Taylor, and so the issue of kids and dogs is near and dear to me right now. I also, in that serendipitous way of the world, just received a question about how to find help for a Boxer who growled at a grand child from the post Who Should Treat Behavioral Problems. Young children and dogs can be the best of friends, or the worst of enemies. There's just no way around it, to some dogs, kids can be unpredictable, rude, and/or frightening. And surely, to some kids, dogs can be unpredictable, rude and/or frightening. Given that, here's some generic advice, sprinkled with specifics from Will's encounters with Taylor. 1) Never live in the land of Read More