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 beds and leaving home.) I can't imagine having a dog who won't stop right away if he or she is regularly off leash. Frankly, I'd be a nervous wreck on walks if I didn't know my dogs would stop when told if they flush a deer from the brush. But wait, no I wouldn't, because I simply wouldn't let my dogs off leash if I wasn't confident that my dogs would stop when I said "Stand." It's something I work hard on, because the more control I have, the more freedom my dogs have. Gotta love one of life's Read More
Go Ahead, Play Hard to Get
Growing up in the 1960's, girls like me were advised to "play hard to get." (I notice now that the phrase was not "be hard to get," but "play hard to get." Sigh.) This, we were told, would make us more attractive to boys. I had no trouble with this in high school, because the only thing I wanted to play at was being around horses, and the only boy interested in my skinny, gawky body was a Physics nerd who thought it was cool that I kicked ass in algebra. We went to Prom together and shook hands after it was over. As awful as the "hard to get" advice sounds to me now, the fact is that scarcity, or its allusion, makes anything more valuable. Female Redpolls, plain brown birds with a tiny red cap, get ooohs and aaahs when they appear here in Southern Wisconsin, because they are rare. The Read More
Book Reviews: Late Summer Version
There's only one problem with having active dogs, doing a massive home remodel and a garden begging for attention--there's not enough time in the day to read as much as I'd like. But I've still managed to enjoy some of the tsunami of books being released, and I thought I'd share what I've been enjoying lately. First, on the canine behavior front, The Science Behind a Happy Dog by Emma Grigg, PhD and Tammy Donaldson, is a great addition to anyone's library, whether a first-time dog owner or an expert in behavior and training. What I like about it especially is its unique perspective. Yes, the book contains a lot about who "dogs are" and how they see the world, how to read their visual signals and training methods that are based on good science. But what makes it especially valuable are Read More
Consciousness in Dogs
Ray Coppinger loves to start controversies, and he did a great job of it at the SPARCS Conference in June. He began his talk by stating that dogs are have no consciousness and are merely "acting out motor patterns." It's always hard to know what Ray believes and what he is saying to generate a conversation, but needless to say, he was highly successful at the latter. The number of attendees who believed that dogs are not conscious or self aware was small indeed, no surprise there. I'll say right off the bat that I'm one of those who believe that dogs are indeed conscious and aware, but I also think it is an important conversation to have. First, because the more we learn about comparative mental states between people and non-human animals the better. Second, because the minds of other Read More
If I Only Had a Tail…
This is the time of year that I regret not having a tail. If I had one, I could curl it around my nose as did Nellie and Polly this morning, the thermometer descending toward single digits. Better yet, I could use it to wag from the shoulders back, like Willie does when Jim comes home. Or perhaps I could toss it up into the air, stiff and straight, and leave a committee meeting in a huff, my tail rising up like a standard held high in medieval England. I'm not sure where that image comes from, given that I've never left a committee meeting in a huff in my life. But then, it doesn't mean I haven't wanted to, and if I did, wouldn't a raised tail make it that much more effective? The fact is, tails are amazing things. Just look at all the functions that tails provide: BALANCE (see Willie Read More
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