We finally had a few days of sun last week. (The round, bright yellow thing in the sky that hurts your eyes if you look at it, just in case you forgot). But of course, it rained again, and since the ground never dried out we seem to be living in a second "mud season". Typically, "mud season" was in spring, but given all the rain this summer and fall, we've had it seems that we'll be living in the equivalent of chocolate icing until it freezes up. (Never has frost looked so good!)Needless to say, that means lots of muddy paws around here, which reminded me how much I love the cue "Ready". I've written about it before, but bring it back every five years or so because it is one of my favorite cues. It'd be great if it was part of every family dog training curriculum, hey?Here's Read More

The author Clive Wynne sums up his book's thesis in its title: Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You. He argues, compellingly, that dogs aren't special because of their intelligence, but because of their social bond to us, which after extensive research, he is happy to call "love".One might say that this is not quite as unique an argument as he suggests, but there is no better scientific explanation of our astoundingly close emotional relationship with dogs than in this book. It contains so much interesting information that I first began trying to summarize all the studies myself for you. Bad plan. Trying to rewrite his entire book in short form was probably not a good idea. What I'll do is list a few, just to whet your appetite.Before I do, I should mention that some of the Read More

Rain. Rain. Rain. Mud. Rain. Mud. Rain. Mud.You get the idea. It is so wet here in southern Wisconsin that it feels like we are living in a petri dish, designed to grow every plant disease known to man. Granted, it's not like the monsoon rains I remember from coastal Alaska, but then, that area is classified as a rain forest. Its plant and animal life is adapted to it. Not true here.I'll illustrate by starting with a rather nice photo of our sunflowers in front of the barn.And here's a wider shot, complete with the squishy, black leaves from a mold/fungus/rot/alien monster plant eater that is found all over my garden now. (I also rather like showing the dark side of the garden, given the articles we all read about how social media presents an unrealistic view of the lives Read More

We're babysitting a friend's dog while she is out of the country, and as you can see, he has one blue eye and one brown. I've always found different color eyes on a dog a bit disorienting; I'm curious about how long it will take me to get used to it.Question One: Do you have a dog that has different color eyes? How did/do you react to it?Thinking about eye color got me thinking about the importance of eye contact in social relationships. We know quite a bit about it in human relationships, and are beginning to learn about it in interspecific ones (relationships between individuals of two species). For example, we know that prolonged eye contact between strangers, if  in a safe and relaxing environment, increases oxytocin and thus feelings of attachment.As I write in a 2015 Read More

Our good friend Debby G came to visit recently, with a report on how her dog Monty was doing. Monty was found on a porch a year ago spring, starving and close to death. Here's a photo of the poor thing soon after he was found.Not surprisingly, although physically healthy now, Monty has a lot of fears, including even the sight of another dog. The good news is that Debby is a dedicated dog owner, and that she has a great team of trainers helping her. Her primary goal is to walk Monty down the street without him freaking out every time he sees another dog. They are making good progress, walking in parallel with one of those worth-his-weight-in-gold Goldendoodles who is stable, unreactive and probably hoarding dog food to deliver to rescue organizations if he could just get a hold of Read More