I'm still reveling in a holiday break. Seeing friends, working Maggie, learning about writing fiction, cooking, eating . . . Even organized my massive collection of recipes: I also have file as big as your arm of "recipes that I should try sometime." There are so many that I'd have to do little but cook for months to try them all out. Worse things could happen. I thought a fun way to end the year is to list some of my favorites in hopes that they add to your life as they have to mine. I'm counting on you all to add your own and enrich our lives even more. I'm interspersing my list of favorites with some of the favorite photographs that I've taken, not just from 2019, but from years past. I hope you enjoy them. My favorite FACEBOOK PAGE is far and away Frans de Waal's public Read More
Archives for 2019
The Right Stuff Revisited
I'm taking a holiday break, surrounding myself with laughter and friends and lighted candles. And good food. Lots of that. Yum. Whilst I cavort, I'm repeating one of my favorite posts from the past, ten years ago this month, actually, December 29th, 2009. If you're busy and need a quick oxytocin rush, scroll to the end and watch a video of a dog who had the right stuff--but it took awhile to find it. The Right Stuff: Every Dog Has Her Place Pippy Tay didn’t look much like a purebred Border Collie; I’d bet money that most shelters would have described her as a BC/Labrador cross. She was big, almost 60 pounds, as long as a table, and had a large, square head that had Labrador written all over it. But she was a Border Collie, the daughter of one of the top trial dogs in the Read More
It’s Not Where Pups are Raised, It’s How
A recent study in Applied Animal Behaviour Science found that pups raised in the home were more confident and less likely to exhibit fear-related aggression than pups raised in kennels. No surprise there to any of us, given all we know about the importance of social interaction and a varied environment in the healthy development of canine cognition, physiology and behavior. Indeed, a study done in 2013, led by McMillan and co-authored by Serpell and Duffy, found that pet store puppies have more behavioral problems than those raised by private breeds, as did a 2011 study on puppies from commercial breeding facilities. (FYI, see Frank McMillan's new edition of his book, Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals, a truly excellent and important work.) Zazie Todd, PhD, who wrote about this Read More
Whale Eye. Nothing to Do with Whales.
I recently found the video below of my dear, departed Misty, illustrating a classic canine expression of fear, the "whale eye". In the video she is being circled by a huge Great Dane, both on leash, both set up for me to get a video of facial expressions in dogs. (I should note that both dogs were safe, the session lasted seconds, and Misty shook it off and behaved as if relaxed afterwards. Second note: I still apologized to her afterward. She listened, play bowed and looked for a treat.) I show it here because it's such a great example of what Sue Sternberg labeled years ago as "whale eye," along with what I call "tongue flicks" or "lip licks". ("Whale eye" after an observation made by a friend of an actual whale moving its eyes and not its head to follow the people on a Read More
Overweight Dogs & Healthy Holiday Food
Tragically, Jim and I finished up the stuffing (aka "nature's perfect food") last night. Honestly, if I had stuffing in the house all the time I would . . . Well, let's just say I would need a new wardrobe. I'm one of those people who has to watch what they eat to maintain a healthy weight, but I'm also aware that it's not that easy for some people, no matter how hard they try. We know now that it's not just "calories in, calories out". It's when you eat, what kind of bacteria are in your gut, how well you sleep, if you are stressed, and how your metabolism responds to different types of foods. And on and on and on. And now we know that it's not that simple for dogs either. For years we've heard that surely we should all be able to regulate our dog's weight, given that we Read More
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