It's a wonderful thing to hold a book you wrote in your hand, long after the writing and the editing and the discussions with the publishers about cover photos and who to ask for quotes on the back... My new book, Tales of Two Species: Loving and Living with Dogs just came from the printers, and I have to admit it feels good to see it. It's a collection of essays written over the years for Bark magazine, published by Dogwise (who I call the Amazon of dog books). Working with the editors of Bark has been a joy, and collaborating with the folks at Dogwise has been equally delightful (I presume you are not shocked to learn that this is not always the case between author and publisher? I have been exceptionally lucky with my national books, having wonderful editors at Ballantine who have Read More
Play in People and Dogs 2, Fall at the Farm
Well, I've edited and compressed 31 separate videos for my 2 talks at APDT. Whew. They aren't perfect, but some of them are truly instructive and a few are just plain fun. It's been like being in a tunnel for the last 4 days working on these things, and still... I continue to be fascinated by all the issues related to play between people and other animals. One of the the things I'll be talking about at APDT is how often dogs intersperse PAUSING with active motor patterns. As I watched videos of dogs playing I was impressed by how many times dog would use some typically exaggerated motor activity, whether it was a bite or a hip slam, and then stop and either stand still, or stay still in a play bow position. If you think about it, play bows not only provide information to the receiver that Read More
The mystery of play
I'm deep in "speech preparation" tunnel, working sun up to sun down on my presentations about play at APDT next week. It's a lot of work, but gratifying. Play is such an interesting topic, I wish I could spend a few months doing nothing but learning, thinking and writing about it. One of the most interesting things about play is its reason for being is a bit of a mystery. Why do animals play? The answer seems like it should be obvious, but the more you think about it, the less you know. Is it for 'practice?' That makes sense, since play is seen mostly in young animals who are physically developing. However, some of the research suggests that practice is not the primary force driving play... (in some studies animals kept from playing are equally adept at predation and fighting.) Another Read More
Scientific American Mind and Your Dog
I just arrived in Atlanta, and am about to settle in, go over my seminar for tomorrow and then watch some foolish movie that does nothing but entertain me and put me to sleep. But I wanted to write about a magazine that I just can't get enough of--Scientific American Mind. If you are interested in behavior, both your own and your dog's, this is a fascinating magazine. It's true it helps to be fascinated by behavior and the brain (I guess that's obvious), and that to some it will be far afield from canine behavior.. but that's what I love about behavior... it is such an eclectic field. Here are just some of the pages I have marked for further review (and future blogs, articles or book sections....) in the Oct/Nov issue: p 10: Researchers at the Zhejiang University in China found that Read More
Are Pets Important 2, Wood work in Fall
I have read your excellent comments with great interest, thank you all so much for writing. I do agree that in many ways it is far too simplistic to sort the world into two groups as I did in my earlier post. I suspect that it's easy to oversimplify when you are frustrated, and truth be told, I was feeling a bit frustrated when I wrote last week. Part of that stemmed from recently hearing what I believe has been meant as a compliment to Calling All Pets. Several times I've heard people say that Calling All Pets is a good show for Wisconsin Public Radio because "it brings in people who wouldn't normally listen to pubic radio." This presupposes that the show's listeners are different than most listeners of public radio. Does that mean that most people who listen to public radio are not Read More
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