One of my favorite games with Willie is to put him on sit/stay and then hide one of his toys in another room. I release him and tell him to go find his toy. We both think it's a hoot and get all waggy from the shoulders back together. We've played it on and off for months, but I started doing it on a daily basis in preparation for his surgery and restricted exercise. Until recently, Willie always looked for the hidden toy. It was overwhelmingly clear that he was using his eyes, and if he couldn't see it, he couldn't find it. However, after about a week and a half of playing the game 4-5 times in a row every evening, Willie completely switched strategies and started using his nose. The switch was absolutely obvious: he'd trot out of the room he'd been in with his nose in the air, sniffing Read More
Dog Fighting Culture, Midwest Vet Med Conference
I'm between speaking at Midwest Vet Med Conference in Ohio and speaking at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior in Tucson. I only had time to fly in and out at the Vet Conference, wish I would have had more time to go to some of the other behavior talks. Happily, in Tucson I get two full days of listening to others, with only an hour to speak on my own. I can't wait... I'll fill you as I can. There are talks scheduled on genetics and behavior, the use of aversives in training, operant treatment of aggression, predicting separation anxiety in shelter dogs, screaming in parrots and urine marking n the domestic dog. And that's not the full list. I am more than ready to get a break from the cold, looking forward to the intellectual stimulation, not to mention some great Read More
Horse and Dog Training–Similarities
I just finished reading a lovely novel, The Hearts of Horses, by Molly Gloss. It's about a young woman who strikes out to make her living "gentling" horses in 1917, when many of the men were off to war. She's more comfortable around animals than she is around people (a current topic of postings on my Feb. 4th '09 blog) and uses methods atypical of the time. Rather than "breaking" horses, Molly uses what people often now call "horse whisperer" techniques to teach horses to work with, rather than against, the people who ride them. In spite of my lack of fondness for the title "horse whisperer," I will never forget watching horse trainer Pat Parelli work an "uncatchable" horse in an arena in Madison, Wisconsin. The horse was so difficult to catch that the club who brought Parelli to Madison Read More
Learning from a Dog’s Perspective; Winter Wildlife
Whoops... thought I had posted this last week. eeeps. Willie had smoke coming out of his ears last Thursday night; I felt so sorry for him. I was giving a book talk at the west side Madison Border's and brought Willie along to illustrate some of the tricks that Karen and I write about in Play Together, Stay Together. He had little trouble with the ones he knows well, but got hung up on transferring a cue from one hand to the other. I have been teaching him to do a 'high five' when I hold my hand up vertically, finger tips pointing upward, and to touch his nose to my hand when it is held horizontally, fingers pointing sideways. That's not a trivial distinction to get, it took him a few days to get it when presented the cue with my right hand. The day before the talk I had asked him to Read More
Willie’s favorite trick
Wheee! I just learned how to post video! Here's my favorite trick. Watch what Willie does when I say "Are You Ashamed of Yourself?" Read More
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