Oh dear, I'm behind already and the day is still young. It's not my fault, it's Hal Herzog's fault, for writing such a thought-provoking and engaging book on human/animal relationships. Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, is the kind of book that once I start I can't put down--thus my late start to the day this morning. Full disclosure: First off, I teach a class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison called "The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships," so this is clearly a topic near and dear to my heart. In the class, we talk about the same complications and contradictions that Hal addresses: Is it ethical to eat cows but not dogs? If yes or no, why? If you had to choose between saving the life of your own dog or a person you'd never met, what would you do and Read More
Archives for 2010
Dog-Dog Reactivity II — The Basics
Thanks for all the great comments about your experiences with dogs who are reactive, whether it's to other dogs, or to people, or other objects. If you haven't read the comments, here's what comes out (at least to me) loud and clear: 1. There isn't any one method that works for all dogs. Dogs are "reactive" for a variety of reasons, including being afraid of other dogs, wanting to greet other dogs and being overwhelmed with excitement or frustration about it. In addition, some dogs seem to be helped by being first taught an appropriate behavior on cue, others do better if allowed to initiate it on their own. 2. The methods that seem to work best for most people involve teaching a dog to turn and look away from another dog, BEFORE the dog begins the problematic behavior. 3. If the Read More
Dog-Dog Reactivity – Treatment Summary
The seminar in Seattle was great fun, lots of good folks and excellent questions from the audience. In the morning I talked about treatment for dog-dog reactivity, and I promised a summary of that on the blog. Here it is, with the obligatory caution that the morning itself wasn't close to enough time to cover the topic in depth, so the summary here will be chapter titles (but hopefully helpful ones). Knowing that I couldn't possibly talk about how to handle every type of case, here are some highlights: REACTIVITY? What are we talking about here? When I use the term I am talking about what we usually think of as "over reactivity," or "reactivity" that we see as inappropriate. After all, a loose body greeting is a "reaction" to another dog, right? In this case, I am talking about Read More
Juvenile-Onset Shyness & Juvenile-Onset Myopia
Earlier I mentioned a possible correlation between reactivity and vision problems, which got many of us thinking about the relationship between eyesight and reactive and/or fearful behavior in dogs. I had remembered that a researcher at UW-Madison did a study on eyesight in dogs, in which GSDs had an especially high rate of myopia, or nearsightedness. That got my attention, given how many reactive GSDs I'd been seeing in my office at the time. We just found the study, and here is a summary of it: (You can find the entire study in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Vol 33, No 8, July '92, by Murphy, Zadnik & Mannis). The researchers looked at the physical structure of the eye (no one asked the dogs if the marks on the wall were bones or dinner bowls!), to evaluate the Read More
Lessons from Herding Dog Trainers
Ah, lucky me. Last week I had two half hour lessons with Alisdair McRae, who I used to call "the Tiger Woods of Herding," but well . . . you know. Alisdair won Open on both Saturday and Sunday at the Portage Trial this weekend, which is pretty much par for the course with him. He is also a clear and kind teacher, and he understands herding dogs as well as anyone in the world. I write this because my lessons reminded me of the universal importance of creating a win for our dogs, and the universal difficulty in always knowing how to do that. I wanted to work on my timing; Willie and I are doing nice outruns and fetches, but our drives look like zig zags instead of the lovely straight lines we are all attempting to achieve. I felt like I was always one step behind, and never able to react Read More
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