A dog’s love of a good chase is both a blessing and a curse. It makes playing with them extra fun; what a joy it is to play fetch and chase with some dogs! And it’s got a dark side too–chasers love to chase cats, cars, joggers and bicyclists, and that doesn’t tend to work…

A reader asked for an update about Will and Sushi, so I thought it was time to fill you in on how it is going. I’m happy to report that things are going extremely well. (Whew!) The entire story would be a chapter in a book (and probably will be!), but here’s the summary: Problem:…

I’m working on a column for Bark magazine about positive reinforcement. It’s such a simple concept once you get it, but it’s a bit like riding a bicycle . . . it takes awhile to be able to do it comfortably and effectively. In the column, I want to stress that it is the receiver…

Hey, why not? Okay, I know, really I do. It costs a fortune to get there, no way around it. But hey, I’m going to do a two-day seminar outside of Auckland on November 27th and 28th, of this year, and what better excuse to take the trip of a lifetime? Besides, the air fare…

I love tail wags: they are such an interesting expression of internal affect and indicator of a dog’s emotional state. And I know the professional trainers who read this blog know how often they can be mis-interpreted by the general public. “But he was wagging his tail…!!!!” is a phrase heard painfully often, by people…

The PATRICIA McCONNELL RETURNS A PUPPY! brou-ha-ha (It’s almost been worth it just having an excuse to use that word: brou-ha-ha. Say it over and over and try not to laugh!) has brought up one of the most important questions in dog training. What “problem behaviors” can be ameliorated by training and/or management, and what…

There are two great new books out, one I have mentioned before that I drank up like a cup of hot chocolate on a warm day: Scent of the Missing, by Susannah Charleson is out, and I just loved it. I liked it so much I contacted her PR rep with the publisher and said…

I took him back. It was one of the  hardest decisions I’ve ever made, because I adored so much about him (see last post). Mick, as I named him, is extremely responsive (came EVERY time I called and clapped), very happy to investigate new things, is not sound sensitive, was already fetching, and was starting…

Well, I just hate it when I mess up. And I did… instead of clarifying something I confused it. Sigh. Let me see if I can do a better job this time: In my last post I talked about saying “Ready” before I lifted Will’s paws to clean them, and how valuable I felt it…

A short post today, but I hope a helpful one. It’s inspired by the “mud luscious and puddle wonderful” nature of spring, and the need to wipe off Will’s paws as we enter the house when it’s wet outside. As I was drying Willie’s paws a few days ago, I thought about how much easier…

One last comment, for now, about our relationships with our dogs.  I had mentioned in the last post that I believe that dogs do better if they see us as what I call “benevolent leaders,” in the sense of good parents or good teachers. Here’s my thinking: Dogs are dependent upon us, granted some more…

I’ll start with the bottom line. I don’t use the word “dominance” when talking to people about training their dogs. There’s just no profit in it. Even given that dominance is about “priority access” and “social freedom,” but not about how to get it, I still see nothing but the potential for confusion and misuse.…

I’ll be working on a post about social status and dog training this week, keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, something happened on Saturday that related to our discussion about fears . . . I mentioned last week that Willie has become fearful of being in the bedroom with me at night. He is better, although…

Next week I’ll start writing about social hierarchies, the “D’ word and dog training. Eeee Hah!  But for now, it’s Friday, I get a weekend without 4 hours a day of grading papers or doing grant reviews for the first time in a month. Ooooooooooh, there’ll be lots of gardening and cleaning of house and…

If you’ve been following the bouncing ball, we’ve been talking about how the concept of “dominance” and social status may or may not relate to dog behavior. Now I’d like to summarize a bit and discuss how we might handle conflict between dogs within the household. After all, whether you buy into it or not…

Last week I wrote about that ever-so-controversial word, “dominance,” and how it might or might not relate to dog behavior and dog training. To refresh: In animal behavior, dominance refers only to “priority access to a limited resource,” has little to do with controlling the actions of another in any other context, is highly dependent…

Ah, here I go into the fray. Picture my loins girded. In some ways I’d love to avoid this topic altogether, because as most of you know, conversations about “the D word” can sometimes turn into arguments that make the American health care debate seem like a day at the spa. (I was going to…

Some of the recent posts have brought up the question that many of us live with on a daily basis: how much training and attention do our dogs need every day? I get asked this a lot, and as I wrote in my essay in Tales of Two Species, I suspect that there’s another fundamental…

I’m reading a fascinating book, one that I recommend with five stars for anyone interested in the brain and behavior. It’s titled The Brain That Changes Itself, and is written, beautifully, by Norman Doidge, M.D. The book’s primary focus is on the plasticity of the brain, and how, in contrast to what was formerly believed,…

A generous friend just sent me one of Nina Ottoson’s interactive dog toys, and Will and I have been having a great time playing with them. Well, he plays, I watch. And, I think he is having a great time. And that’s the question for the day. Is he really? Do dogs enjoy these toys…

One of the great comments on my post about the new Puppy Book reminded me that training “step by step” is not intuitive. Someone may know that there are multiple steps between a dog sitting on cue when asked in the kitchen at dinner time, versus being asked to sit when barking at the visitors…

Wheeee! I’ve been working on an updated version of the Puppy Primer for six months now, and it feels SO good to finally hold the finished product in my hot little paws. In it, co-author Brenda Scidmore and I emphasize the benefits of positive reinforcement, of letting dogs initiate the correct action themselves when possible,…

I’ve loved your comments about play styles after the last post. Keep them coming. One of the points that was made by many of you, that I think bears repeating, is that many dogs can adapt and learn new play styles from others. This is especially true of stable, well-adjusted dogs who aren’t overly reactive…

A short post today, but with a pithy question generated from the last post on play. We all agree that different breeds of dogs tend to have different play styles, with herding dogs, for example, more likely to engage in run/chase games and bully breeds more likely to wrestle and body slam. Wrestling can include…

Here’s a video of Willie playing with a Lily, a 4 month old female Dogo Argentino. He has just met her, and after a brief greeting by the farm house, we walked up the hill to the Orchard Pasture. I love watching videos of dogs playing; it seems that you can see so much if…

Here’s one small aspect related to the question of how dogs interpret our cues: I started listing the cues that Will responds to, asking myself if he saw them as verbs or nouns (good point by one of the readers that humans can use one word for both, as in “snow.”) I didn’t get very…

One of the segments on the BBC show The Secret Life of Dogs that generated several interesting comments was the segment that showed “Betsy,” (not her real name, you gotta love that some dogs now have ‘nom de plumes’) retrieving an object after being shown just a photograph of it. Wow. That truly is amazing.…

There is a great BBC special on dogs on YouTube, (sent to me by an alert reader, thank you!). I spend so much time in front of my computer that I rarely want to watch an hour long show on it . . but this time I sat down and didn’t move for 60 minutes.…

There’s been a lot of hugging lately, from dear friends expressing love and sympathy after Lassie’s death. And oh, a good hug feels so good, doesn’t it? Thinking of it reminds me of how very differently dogs and people express affection and care, and how hugging is so hard-wired in humans, but not natural to…

Clients often tell me that their rescue dog must have been “beaten by a man” when the dog was younger, because the dog is afraid of men and not woman. However, people in the training and behavior field know that almost all shy dogs are more afraid of men than women, even if men have…

I’m inspired to write this after crying over the happy ending of a lost dog saga. A Golden bitch, who had been rescued from a hellish life in a puppy mill, had escaped from her new home and run into the woods. She was friendly and loving to everyone when she was in her foster…

A few days ago I wrote a post on how to handle signs of impending trouble if you see it in someone else’s dog (Please Believe Me, Trouble Brewing!) I asked for comments from other pro’s on how they handle this situation, and from owners on how they would like it handled. The comments sent…

A recent comment motivated this post. It was from a veterinarian who tries her hardest to alert clients to current and potential behavioral problems, and is a tad frustrated on occasion by how few of them seem to take her cautions seriously. I am sure that other vets, dog trainers and behaviorists are all sighing…

I’m curious about your experience with dogs who are dog-dog aggressive and what I’ll call “intensive sniffers.” Ever since I heard Sue Sternberg say that dogs who sniff obsessively in her office are often/usually/always?) dog-dog aggressive, I have paid more attention to “intensive sniffing behavior” (I don’t know what else to call it–but hey, I…

This is an authentic question: ie, I don’t have the answer. But it’s a great question, posed by a seminar attendee, and also by someone who reads the blog. Do dogs think we are mutant dogs? Pathetic replicates who never grow out of our flat, puppy faces (we never grow muzzles) and can’t use our…

A recent comment from blog readers brought up a fascinating issue. I’ll just introduce it here, and then continue delving into it as time goes on. Here’s the question: Is it possible that dogs who appear to be super submissive are, uh…, not? I think the answer is yes. I say ‘yes’ because I think…

What a great conversation we’ve had about these behaviors in dogs. I originally posted on this topic on October 10th, and the comments in response have been fascinating. For those of you who’d rather not read through them, I’ll summarize them here, and add some information I’ve found elsewhere. First of all, I did look…

I am not sure if the title is more reminiscent of canid communication or some strange, alien kind of cookies, but let’s go with the former. I’m writing this post because I’d love your interpretation of 3 canid behaviors that we’ve been discussing in the comments on one of my posts. I had mentioned a…

Greetings from Oregon. I just finished up with two talks at UC-Davis and a day long seminar in Corvallis, Oregon, sponsored jointly by OSU and Wonder Dogs. The participants and hosts could not have been more delightful, and I thank everyone for making the trip enjoyable and more than worthwhile. All three events had a…

Oh dear, I’m about to rave about a book that doesn’t come out until April (April? Why did the Advance Copy come so soon?). Scent of the Missing, by Susannah Charleson is so well written I don’t know whether to be inspired or to turn my computer off and never write again. It’s a story…

True confession: I haven’t finished the book The Wolf in the Parlor. I might not, at least not in the near future. Here’s why: As I said in my last post, the author’s thesis is that “people and dogs, around 12,000 years ago, linked their evolutionary paths together and evolved socially and physically to take…

Well, I had wanted to write about a book one of you asked about: The Wolf in the Parlor, but life seems to have its own schedule and I have only just started it. It is one of the gazillion books I am sent by publishers to review and I have to admit I have…

Here’s a video of Self Handicapping that I took 3 years ago, when Will was a young pup and Lassie was the stronger of the two. It’s a lovely illustration of appropriate dog play, showing how the stronger dog self handicaps to avoid overwhelming the weaker player.  Lassie, even now, is capable of pulling with…

One of your fellow blog readers alerted us to a study recently published in Behavioral Processes titled “Disambiguating the “guilty look” by Alexandra Horowitz. It is a creative and well-designed study that supports what trainers, ethologists and behaviorists have been saying for years: “No, your dog isn’t expressing guilt when he cowers at the door…

This summary doesn’t begin to address the subject in depth, to do so would require a book, but I hope you’ll find what I’ve written interesting nonetheless. My biggest problem with this was not spending all week on it… the topic is so interesting, and almost every fact led to a question. (Territorial? Well, that’s…

As you know if you’ve been following the blog, 1/2 the folks who went to Kenya continued on to Botswana. We all knew that seeing Wild Dogs wasn’t a guarantee, but we had high hopes because we were going where and when our chances were highest. (And no, in response to one comment, there are…

An alert reader sent in a link to a story about ‘village’ dogs in Russia who have figured out how to forage for food in an urban setting. The dogs actually hop onto trains that take them into the city where there is a great deal of food. But they don’t just forage in garbage…

One of our alert readers sent a link to a study done by Kathryn Lord of U. Massachusetts on the “meaning” of barks in a variety of species. The link is to a newspaper article written about the study, complete with comments (mostly irate) about the findings of the work. But the study (which I…

Wheeeee, the new 1/2 day seminar on play that I did in California a few weeks ago is out now on DVD, thanks to lots of hard work by Alta at Tawzer Videos. You can learn more about Dog Play on my website, but here’s the summary: The seminar focused on three aspects of canine…

WRITTEN MID-JULY, POSTED WHILE I’M IN AFRICA: I recently spent three evenings with Jim’s son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter Taylor, and so the issue of kids and dogs is near and dear to me right now. I also, in that serendipitous way of the world, just received a question about how to find help for a…