Oh my, I wish you could have been at the Animal Behavior Society Conference, just held in Milwaukee, WI. The "Applied Track" and "Public Day" were awesome. I'll be writing posts about it for many weeks to come. (Next year it will be in Chicago, IL. Be there or be square. More on that in another post.)Here's a summary of one of the talks most relevant to dog owners, trainers and shelters--a fantastic presentation by Heather Mohan-Gibbons, ASPCA Director of Research. In a talk titled "What happens when animal shelters stop assessing for food guarding in their shelter assessments?" we learned that the answer was crystal clear:  Nothing. In this study, just published in Animals 2018, nine shelters did food guarding assessments for two months on all dogs deemed otherwise Read More

On our trip to northern Minnesota and my talk at the gorgeous Virginia Public Library (thank you for your gracious reception!) Jim and I stopped at the International Wolf Center in Ely.Lucky us, we just happened to arrive when the "enrichment" exercise was the delivery of a rack of ribs and a beaver. A caretaker delivered the goodies in a wheel barrow, and then we all got to watch, behind glass and just a few feet away, as the wolves sorted out who got what, and when.I got a few photos that I thought you'd enjoy seeing, given that they are such good examples of canid social communication through facial expressions and body posture.It's pretty clear in the photo below what wolf Denali is communicating. I especially like how this "offensive pucker" shows the classic "tight C" Read More

I'm out of town again, speaking at the Virginia Public Library (that's in Minnesota, not the east coast) and spending some time with the dogs in a cabin on a lake. Knowing I'd be gone, and that July is my designated summer break, I looked for a blog to re-post. I found this one from October, 2014 that uses one of my favorite stories from my youth as an introduction to the concept that kindness and positive reinforcement in animal training is not a new concept at all. Here it is:Here’s my proudest moment in life (so far): It’s 1967, when the idea of women wearing pants was still a tad radical. But “pants suits” had just came out–dressy outfits that put trousers on your legs instead of a skirt, even for evening wear. I worked as a salesgirl in a boutique in Scottsdale, AZ, and bought Read More

Not long ago I had the pleasure of watching a rising star in the dog training world, Chirag Patel. There were a number of things I loved about his presentation, but I kept thinking about one in particular: The importance of knowing when your dog needs a brief break during a training session.This is not something that we humans are hard-wired to do. After all, we--the trainers--are fine, being the ones who know the goal of the exercise. We're cruising along giving positive reinforcement boom boom, boom, one right after the other. It's all positive, right?Well, no it's not. No matter how many pieces of chicken can go down a dog's eager throat, it can be exhausting to learn something new, especially when one doesn't know the goal. It is easy to forget how stressful learning anything Read More