Stunned. Does It Happen to Dogs Too?
I was at a sheepdog trial recently when a friend reminded me of an incident from long ago that I described in For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotions in You and Your Best Friend. Here's the text: At first, all I saw was a white blur out of the corner of my eye. It was a long way away, maybe 500 yards, and initially I wasn’t sure what it was. Most of my focus was on my Border Collie Luke, who was running his fastest about two hundred yards away. I’d sent him on a long outrun toward a flock of sheep during a “fun day,” when herding enthusiasts get together and revel in dogs and sheep and the sloppy kisses of young puppies. Many people there that day were serious competitors in Read More
Piloerection in Dogs: Scared, or Just Glad to See Me?
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 3 illustrations I have in this post were labeled as "angry dogs." However, piloerection is an indicator of arousal, not potential aggression. There are a lot of emotional states that can correlate with arousal, including fear, excitement and surprise, and some of those might lead to aggression, but not necessarily. Raised hackles, or Read More
No Work on Labor Day
I'm taking the weekend off, it being Labor Day and all. Here are a few photos of the WWSDA Midwest Championship Sheepdog Competition we just got back from. (More on that next week!) Skip and Maggie loved doing their volunteer job of picking up sheep after the ProNovice Runs. Here's Maggie waiting for this run to be completed. Skip is hanging out with another volunteer, the good dog Faith and her human, Jennifer. We worked for 5.5 hours, but alternated between three dogs, so it went very well. Maggie, pushing 9 years old, was pretty tuckered that night however. See you next week! Read More