Today I'm reposting an article I wrote almost ten years ago to the day, (January, 2010) with a few additions and revisions. I find it is as relevant today as it was then. I'll love hearing your comments now as much as I did then. Clients often tell me that their rescue dog must have been “beaten by a man” when the dog was younger, because the dog is afraid of men. However, almost all shy dogs are more afraid of men than women, even if men have been kind to them their entire lives. We’ve always speculated that it had something to do with the way men walked (more assertively?) or their bigger chests, larger jaws, and/or deeper voices. But we’ve never really known for sure what it was–perhaps it is related to scent: Obviously men smell different than woman, could be that just ‘maleness’ is Read More
Archives for 2020
Nothing to Yawn About–Yawning as a Sign of Empathy
This topic is making me yawn. Literally. I'm doing it as I type this. Not because it's boring, but because yawning is contagious in a large percentage of people (If one person yawned, then 45-60% of the people observing it yawned themselves, according to one study). You don't even have to see someone yawn to get the effect: Just reading or thinking about yawning can make some of us yawn involuntarily. (If you are as bad as I am about this, and just the letters "y,a,w..." can start you yawning, don't feel foolish. It turns out that being susceptible to "contagious yawning" correlates with all kinds of good things, including high levels of empathy, and higher scores on theory of mind. Well, cool, she said, yawning again.) But you no doubt know that this response isn't confined to our own Read More
Slimmer Dogs, Longer Lives.
If only I couldn't open the cabinet doors myself. It would make it easier for me to maintain my ideal weight, but alas, nobody controls my weight but me. But not so for dogs. We control when and what they eat. And so they should all be at the perfect weight, right? But of course, we know that they are not. A shocking percentage of dogs and cats are problematically overweight, according to the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention. They report that in 2016, 59% of cats and 54 % of dogs in the U.S. were classified as overweight or obese. And the numbers are climbing: in 2009 9% of the dogs were obese, while the percentage rose to 20% in 2016. I was reminded of this in Dr. Chris Zink's great blog titled How to Make your Dog Live Longer. (Subtitle: It's Easy.) And simple. Read More
What Should I Do About My Impossible Dog? said the dental hygienist while cleaning my teeth.
I'm going to break the rules here and start by saying what this post is not: It is not a post about how to deal with an "impossible dog." Or one who is "dominant." Or one who is "aggressive." Rather, it is a forum for us to have a good laugh about all time times any of us, whether knowledgeable pet owners, dog trainers, behaviorists or veterinarians, have been asked difficult dog training questions in impossible situations. I was motivated to write this by, ironically, a wonderful question from a wonderful dental hygienist, who asked me a good, simple question and gave me my mouth back so I could answer. (For the record, her question was "Is my dog really being dominant when he puts his paw on my arm?" Apparently many of her friends had told her that her sweet, soft, loving and benign Read More
Safe and Ecologically Friendly Dog Toys
This is Maggie asked to sit and stay beside her overflowing toy box, the one I promised to clean out over the holiday break. (You can see how well I did.) In spite of having two overfull bags of "toys kept away from Maggie to re-introduce at a later time," the toy box in our living room has gotten out of hand. I will clean it out soon, I will I will I will, but it got me thinking about what is new in dog toys and, heaven help me, what I should be looking for in new ones. Primary on my list is safety, of course, but secondarily I want to buy her new toys from places that are as good to the planet as they are for our dogs. That got me hunting around on the internet for eco-friendly dog toys, where I discovered all kinds of wonderful things. First, I like this post from Read More