Bark magazine has a great article on the benefit of not labeling a dog’s breed–or more likely, it’s supposed breed, on its cage in a shelter. A Shelter Dog’s Fate Can Rest on What Breed He is Labeled describes how breed labels are first, often wrong, and second, influence buyers of all dogs, and not…

My usual response to someone saying “My dog is so smart!” is: “I’m so sorry, my sympathies.” Smart can be great, but it also means that your dog has learned to steal dirty laundry to get your attention, or that you don’t really mean it when you say “Leave it,” or that the kitchen cabinet…

January has been designated “National Train Your Dog Month” by the Association of Professional Dog Trainers (APDT), and hey, why not? (Check out their free videos, by the way, good for them.) Those of us in the north of the northern hemisphere are getting cabin fever anyway, so why not think of a few things…

I love a lot about this time of year, from holiday lights to the sweetness of friends and family. Not to mention the cookies. And the cake. Just saying. Something I’ve done for decades this time of year is to reflect on the past year and envision what I’d like the next year to include.…

Not sure what kind of music to play over the holidays? Here’s some tips: If you’ve invited Orangutans to Christmas dinner, (and who hasn’t?), they would prefer silence. Some chimpanzees like rock music better than quiet, while other chimps are more social when hearing classical music with a slow tempo. Lambs put on more weight…

I know–it’s late to be talking about gifts for pets and pet lovers the week before Christmas. But the adventure of life never ceases to remind us that plans are just that. Plans. Which have to be changed when life interrupts our carefully-constructed calendars. I love the holidays, now that I’ve decided to focus on…

(This is a post from a few years ago, but it is so important that I thought it was worth posting again. I’d write a new one, but, well, everything I want to say is here, so I’ve posted it again. I’d love your feedback, stories, etc., on what works (or doesn’t work), for you.)…

What does your dog do when you aren’t home? Sleep? Gaze out the window longing for the sexy little Lhaso across the street?  Or, relevant to today’s post, does he wish he could call and talk to you wherever you are? Maybe a quick text?   That’s the premise of a study that NYT journalist…

In my last post I mentioned that Skip was being given couch privileges, but he didn’t feel quite comfortable up there when first allowed. Here’s the photo I took several weeks ago: It’s pretty clear who was the most comfortable. This photograph, along with a post on my Facebook page, led to some comments about…

It was hard not to write to all of you last week, seriously. But, I made some real progress on the novel and that feels good. I didn’t write thousands of new words, but I got some good work done on the structure and plot. (Not that plot is important in a mystery . .…

Well, this is weird. It’s Monday morning, and I’m not in my usual place, writing my blog on my laptop in the dining room, Skip curled up against the door, Maggie out of sight in the living room sprawled on the couch. No, I’m writing to you on the huge iMac in my study, the…

I don’t know about you, but the state of the world is such right now that I need lots of healthy distractions. (What, is the vodka, triple sec, pomegranate, lime juice, club soda drink I sort of invented not healthy?) I am indeed doing what I can to be a good, active citizen, but one…

  Dr. Hal Herzog, a PhD psychologist specializing in behavior and human/animal relationships (see Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat), recently wrote an article for Psychology Today that got my attention. Before publication, he talked to me about it briefly, with the following question: Did I find that anxious owners tended to…

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. …

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…

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…

  Last weekend we were at a sheepdog trial, where I could walk the dogs off leash in a field full of campers and other dogs. The area was surrounded by a knock-you-to-your-knees electric fence. What a joy to know that I could trust my dogs to stop when I said, stay close when asked,…

Can dogs be deceptive? And if so, do they use that skill to get what they want? I started thinking about this after reading about a new study, that’s gotten a lot of press, that suggests dogs, unlike some primates and young children, ignore people who give them bad advice about where to find some…

“We pooped!” This was enthusiastically said by a friend, eyes shining and face flushed with victory, as if she had just won the National Finals. Turns out her dog is the kind who has trouble doing his business when distracted by the excitement of a sheepdog trial and had finally produced. If you’re reading this…

I’m always fascinated to see how dogs change when they change from being the only dog to one of a two. Or two of a kind turn into three of a kind. I thought of this when a friend called after adding a third dog to her home. In a few weeks her formerly sweet,…

Ah summer! Jim and I got to take a road trip out east to see friends and family. It was beyond wonderful to see them all. (FYI, we were super covid cautious, and felt lucky to get it squeezed in just before things started getting critical again.) We got to see dear friends, Meg Boscov…

I’m taking some summery time off this week, and so am repeating a post from May, 2014, How to Talk to Other Dog Owners.  Wanna talk about it? Here it is: When I was seeing a lot of clients I could always tell when I was tired because I started working with the dog, rather…

Our friend and colleague, Katha Miller-Winder, a prolific contributor to the comment section of this very blog (“Kat”), has published a valuable book that gives guidance and advice to those who’d like to join that special group of people and dogs who make the world a better place because of their efforts. Becoming a Therapy…

  A recent study in Current Biology by Emily Bray, et. al., Early-emerging and highly heritable sensitivity to human communication in dogs, caught my eye recently, because it brings up a variety of interesting issues to those of us interested in human-dog communication. One of those is the issue of whether dogs inherently understand a…

In keeping with my new schedule, the first post of the month is always just photographs. Here’s a sampling of life at the farm over the weekend: First, we had a joyous reunion with three other couples on Saturday night who we haven’t seen in a year and a half. They regaled us with ridiculously…

Sometimes I wish I was 100% retired. But then I get the privilege of talking to amazing people, like Ferdie Yau of Behavior Vets NYC about his work on the Gotham Coyote Project and his “coyote scat detection dog, Scout. Ferdie is one of those people whose enthusiasm and curiosity is so strong it would…

Starting to travel again? As our country gradually opens up, the question of what to do with our pets if we don’t take them with us arises. I’m curious what choice you make, and what advice you have for others, about whether to kennel a dog or get a house sitter. Of course, both have…

What would we do without our veterinarians and vet techs?? Not to mention everyone else who helps us keep our companion animals as healthy as we can. This week I’m celebrating Veterinary Appreciation Day and I hope you’ll join me. I’ll admit to being a bit jaded at all the “special days” we hear about…

Dogs. Babies. Adorable. Unless you’re a trainer or behaviorist, and cover your eyes while watching some of the “cute” on line videos, showing young children at risk of being bitten because the dog was radiating discomfort while the parents cooed and laughed. People like me, CAABs (Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists), Veterinary Behaviorists, and a whole…

As always, Memorial Day feels hard to wrap my head around, or maybe it’s my heart. It’s a day of the beginning of summer and BBQs and, this year especially, celebrations of finally being able to be with friends and family. And it’s a day of mourning and respect and gratitude for those who have…

So I don’t bury the lead, here’s where I’m going today: Why does the concept that dogs can get angry make some people angry? I was reminded of that when I was looking something up in For the Love of a Dog (I often forget where I wrote what . . .) and ran into…

Several months ago, Skip began leaping up and down in front of me while we walked up the hill, in anticipation of getting the toy that he and Maggie play tug games with. It was cute for a few weeks, and then became irritating. I’m trying to walk forward up a steep hill, and he’s…

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and Laurel and I put up a link on Facebook to an article that Karen London wrote in Bark about making Mother’s Day more inclusive, adding in women who care for dogs into the picture. (Laurel is my social media queen; she helps me with Facebook and Instagram and I kiss…

  This week is all about the Nippersink or Swim Sheepdog Trial, outside of Lake Geneva, WI. It was our first competition of the year, and given that training hadn’t been going well, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations. But it turned out well, and most importantly, Maggie and Skip appeared to…

  I’ve been thinking about Maggie a lot lately, and wondering whether she wants to continue to compete in sheepdog trials. She is always eager to work sheep, leaves the course (or did last year) as if eager to do it again, even when it went badly. She clearly adores the part she’s good at…

A dear friend (thank you Kathy!) sent me an autographed copy of a wonderful book, The Great Animal Orchestra, by Bernie Krause. Subtitled Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places, the book is a “. . . travelogue of sound, based on a lifetime of study, (and) will leave you hearing–and seeing–nature…

I wrote about Chirag Patel, as a rising star in the dog training world in July of 2018 (or, a million years ago, in the Before Times), and am loving the opportunity to write about him again. What he calls “The Bucket Game” has gotten a lot of attention lately, as well it should. I’m…

It’s all photos today, part of my celebration of spring. And wowser! It really does feel like spring now, which I am still struggling to wrap my head around. Is winter really over? This is Wisconsin after all, where it can dump massive amounts of snow in April, but it’s going to be 75 today…

  Will your dog stop on cue when trotting, loping or full-out running away from you? I consider it an essential tool for any dog that is ever off leash. (When I say “running away,” I mean “running with their faces turned away from their humans, not “running away” as in packing up their dog…

Having a dog with Separation Anxiety is no fun for the owner, and no doubt less fun for the dog. Mild cases include dogs who pace or whine for a bit after their owner leaves, while dogs with serious cases can injure themselves and/or destroy your house. I write about how to prevent and treat…

This is Part Two of last week’s discussion about what visual signals can and can’t tell us about the internal state and future behavior or our dogs. I should mention right away that I had planned to add my own comments about what we could discern from the video of Misty and the photo of…

Misty, My Little Misty, aka MistyCuffs (no idea where that came from) was afraid of dogs she’d never met. She was one of those dogs who wanted to be in control all the time, and yet had no self confidence to go along with the power. (I called her the Richard Nixon of dogs.) I’ve…

Full disclosure: March is not my favorite month. It’s a month of walking through mud to get to the icy places where you’re in danger of falling if you don’t take tiny baby steps, covering about 6 inches at a time. Then you cross the ice, and slip in the mud and fall down anyway.…

Paws Paws Paws. That’s pretty much been the focus of life here for the last week. I mentioned in last week’s post that Maggie and Skip might have had “frostbitten” paws; little did I know how deep into the weeds of frostbite and dog paws I would go. I’ve a learned a lot, (understatement of…

A thorough answer to this question is too complicated for any one article, but it’s a common and important one. Actually, the question I am usually asked is this: “What breed of dog should we get?” The quick answer is simple: “It’s not about the breed.” Well, but, of course it is in some ways.…

 I was going to title this “Skip likes it rough,” but, well, you know . . .  the internet. But the fact is that Skip came to us loving to play rough and Maggie didn’t, and we’ve gone through a year of managing and conditioning and innovating and despairing and come out the other side…

It’s been a week. Two shockingly unexpected deaths in the family, one human, one canine. Jim and I are fine, but I’m taking a break this week and just focusing on photographs. First, and best, Skip is completely recovered from his surgery and able to work. As is often the case, I used Maggie to…

I welcomed the onset of winter in November. Summer time is busy for me, too busy on occasion. Dog trialing and gardening come at the same time of the year in the Midwest, and so those hobbies, along with work and all the rest of life, mean the days are still too short, no matter…

Skip had surgery last Friday to remove his internal testicle (unilaterally cryptorchid), because of its higher probability of causing testicular cancer. (This issue… neutering or the removal of one testicle, is a huge one, and controversial at that. I started to delve into it as part of today’s post, but decided to wait for that…

                                (Excuse me, there’s a growth on your head. Is it dangerous?) Recently I read an article in Bark Magazine titled “8 Things We Do That Really Confuse Our Dogs.” Written by Melissa Starling and Paul McGreevy, (and originally published in The Conversation), the authors lists several points to which I say Hear Hear! (And…