Here’s one of the great lessons Ken Ramirez had for us at the Clicker Expo in Chicago last weekend: The basics aren’t really all that basic after all. In his experience, one of the most common mistakes he sees in even experienced trainers is forgetting the importance of some of the basics. Here are some…

Many of you have seen the video below, but for those of you who haven’t, here is a reminder that it is not just the people of Japan who are suffering. I don’t want to break your hearts, and don’t pretend that this is easy to watch, but I hope it does inspire some to…

I’ll grant this is as much for me as it is for you all, but I imagine I’m not the only one who could use a good laugh around now. You may have seen this already, and you may have mixed feelings about putting animals in the place of humans . . . but, oh,…

This weekend I visited a wonderful woman doing rescue for small breeds, mostly bichons from puppy mills. I had somewhat randomly discovered that she lived close to me, and went to visit in hopes I could help out a bit. I also had a selfish motivation: as many of you know, Karen London and I…

How many times have you heard that “dogs have no sense of time”? I’ve heard it and read it over and over and over again, and always wondered why anyone thought they knew it to be true. Or not. How would we know? I’ve been asked this question often, and always answered I simply didn’t…

I mentioned earlier that Willie has re-injured his shoulder. He’s going in for a consult with my “sport medicine vet” on Wednesday, but meanwhile I am playing the not-always-so-fun game of keeping him quiet and not stressing his shoulder. Our two most challenging times are when he is waiting for his dinner and when he…

Yup, I finally did it. I’d love to hear from you on my Facebook page; it all feels very new and strange. Does it sound like I’ve been in a cave for five years? Ah well, I’m catching up slowly.  I’m still feeling my way through this, so bear with me. Sigh. So far, it’s…

Thanks to all who have commented so far in answer to the questions “Are you a 100 % positive trainer?” and “Would you sign a pledge to only use positive reinforcement and never use punishment?” I appreciate the thoughtful discussion that the questions have generated. I’ll jump in now, with the caveat that this topic…

Recently there have been some debates and discussions about whether it is possible to be a “100% positive” trainer. This has become an issue because some seminar hosts have policies that they will not hire anyone for a seminar unless they only use positive reinforcement and “never use punishment or aversives.” Some people are being…

With virtually no objectivity what so ever, I’m excited to announce that registration is open for a completely new seminar, to be held in Madison, WI on October 29th & 30th. I’ll be working much of the summer on creating an up-to-the-minute summary of what we know about canine behavior and cognition for Saturday, and…

My last post started a good discussion about the use of the term “counter conditioning,” (and its use in treating Separation Anxiety) and one of the comments in particular reminded me that the term is often used differently by different people. For years I’ve always specified “counter classical conditioning” when talking about treatment for SA,…

A study came out recently in Applied Animal  Behavior Science that suggests that Counter Conditioning (CC)  is not an effective way to treat Separation Anxiety. Since I’ve been advising the use of this method for many years, my ears pricked up in hopes I’d learn something important about how better to treat this serious behavioral…

I mentioned “The Model-Rival Method” earlier when talking about training dogs to associate words with objects, and I thought it’d be fun to illustrate what I was talking about. The video at the bottom of the post is an example of this method, famously used by Dr. Irene Pepperberg to train Alex the African Grey…

As is often the case with all of us, my agenda for today changed after a phone call that got my attention. A reporter for CNN called, and asked what I thought about an article that just came out in Emerging Infectious Diseases (the journal of the Center for Disease Control). Titled “Zoonoses in the…

We’ve been told (and I’ve repeated in my books ) that it takes about 21 to 28 days to learn a new habit. That doesn’t sound like too long a time, but the research also found that people tend to drop out a new behavior after about 2 weeks if they don’t go out of…

Like many of you (great comments!) I’ve been playing this week with what words Willie defines the same as I. As suspected, most of the words I have used to communicate with him are verbs (to him), and that appears to be his “default” understanding. He HAS learned however, names for living things, me, Jim,…

Move over Rico. Have you heard about the new article out in Beh’l Processes about a BC named Chaser who has not only learned names for 1022 objects, but has shown that she distinguishes between verbs and nouns? There’s more to this study, but let me start with the noun/verb issue. This is an especially…

My last post raised the question “when should one start training a dog,” and we’ve had a lively and interesting discussion about it in the comment section. Our conversation has raised, as good conversations often do, another issue that I think deserves attention: How do you define training? Many comments have said that we are…

Oh my. An alert reader sent me an blog from Psychology Today’s website. The essay is by Lee Charles Kelly, and argues that “dog training is no longer working that well” because we start “obedience” training too soon. The quote is actually attributed to Ian Dunbar, and Kelly uses that comment, and suggestions from psychologists…

Like many people, I’m classically conditioned to associate “New Year’s Resolutions” with broad, generic and doomed-to-fail pronouncements, like “I’ll be healthier!”  “I’ll lose 20 pounds!”  “I’ll be an all around better person!” “I’ll kind and generous to everyone I meet!” I made my share of impossible resolutions in decades past, and like most of them,…

I don’t like to use the blog to promote things. The good people here at the office attempt to remind me that I have to make a living, but they have pretty much given up trying to convince me to use the blog as a marketing device. But on occasion they make arguments that even…

I just did a photo shoot for a magazine cover with Willie (more on that later) and I was reminded while doing it how many pet dogs are going to be asked to participate in the GREAT HOLIDAY PHOTOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE. Except I don’t think dogs would use the word “adventure” if they could talk about…

Oh boy oh boy. We’ve just finalized arrangements to hold a seminar in Madison Wisconsin on October 29-30, 2011. Inspired by the seminar I did in New Zealand, I’m going to give a completely updated version of  Advanced  Canine Behavior on Saturday. The day will include state of the art research on cognition, play and…

Just a few photos now, more later when more time (and can download a video of a working Huntaway when we get home)…. We’re on the Banks Peninsula now, just south of Christchurch, gorgeous place, staying at a B &  B called the Olive Grove (complete with olive trees and yummy high quality olive oil).…

Hardest thing I’ve ever done (voluntarily!), and the most rewarding. Here’s just a few photos from our adventures on the Milford Track, South Island, New Zealand. Our group had a total of 15 people, only 6 of us from the US, all good and true friends. Here we are on Day 1, after a 2.5…

There’s a new book out for children that is designed to help them cope with the death of their dog. It’s titled “Give a Dog your Heart” and is written by Aubrey Fine, Ed.D., a child psychologist who has been using dogs in AAT as long as anyone. I’m not completely objective, Aubrey and I…

About to meet up with some dear friends, and leave for a visit to a Gannet colony, nature center, vineyard and sheep farm, but here’s a photo from the Shangri La where Jim and I are staying for a few nights. Ummmmmmm, yes, it really is this gorgeous. Can’t wait for the Gannets and the…

Couldn’t resist… here is a flock (should I say mob?) of some of my new Kiwi friends. What a great day we had together! (And thanks Karen for that yummy NZ lamb dinner and for all the good company. Looking forward to tomorrow….

Here’s a video I’m going to show in New Zealand of Willie, Hope and friend Mico, from this summer. I’m not going to say much about it, because I am curious what words you would use to describe what you are seeing. Watch it a couple of times, and then if you are so inspired,…

So how would you get water in your mouth if you didn’t have hands and a glass? Carefully watching how dogs and cat lap up liquid may seem trivial, but it’s actually a great exercise in being a good observer. As you can see in the video below, cats get water in their mouths not…

A reader asked if I’d go through what I do to prepare for a trip when I can’t take my dogs along. I thought it was a good question for all of us, and a lead in to what could be a fruitful discussion. After all, leaving one’s dog(s) is hard, and the only way…

Thanks for the discussion about the use of Body Blocks for teaching Stay, and to re-iterate a comment I made, they work equally well with dogs of all breeds and sizes (but you have to be a bit quicker with some breeds and with small dogs).  If your dog is getting around you to the…

Working Willie on sheep in preparation for tomorrow’s trial reminded me of the first time I made a connection between the way Border Collies herd sheep and dog training in general. As you all know,  BCs control sheep by what I call “space management.” They don’t bark, rarely bite, but “take the space” away from…

One of the best talks at APDT’s Cognition Symposium was Monique Udell’s presentation on her research on pointing gestures. I promised before I went that I’d write about new results on this issue, and Monique gave me lots to talk about. To recall the issue: some researchers, Hare and Tomasello originally, found that domestic dogs…

For the last two days, Willie has been acting abnormally. He regressed back to sleeping in the bathroom, instead of his dog bed beside my bed. He took his stuffed Kong in the morning to his usual place, but then wouldn’t eat anything out of it. He came into the office this morning and lay…

Seriously. I jokingly asked this question at the end of my talk at APDT (more on that in the next post), but although it’s not exactly a burning question related to training and behavior, I still wonder about it. Honestly… what do they think? We collect it and object when they try to eat it.…

Oh my, I overslept this morning, a rare event for me, and my plans of writing a substantial blog this morning are buried under the mess of blankets and covers that I threw aside when I finally woke up and looked at the clock. Holy moly. But I’ll write from the road and keep you…

Below is a flyer from a woman who tragically lost her heart dog to a wild mushroom, the Death Cap. The Death Cap mushroom (Amanita phalloides) is not only the most common cause of mushroom poisoning in people in the US, it is spreading rapidly throughout the country, especially in some areas of California and…

I’m working on my Intro for APDT’s symposium on Canine Cognition, and one of the hot topics right now is why dogs seem to be better able to interpret a pointing gesture than are wolves or chimps. Various research projects (see below) have shown that dogs go directly toward food hidden under one of two…

Thanks for the great comments on what’s needed in a booklet for people bringing home adult dogs from shelters or rescues.  Keep ’em coming, either on this post or the previous one. A lot of you will be gratified to know that the points at the top of my own list are similar to many…

Karen London and I are planning on writing a booklet for people who adopt dogs from shelters or rescue groups. We’re both aware that often it can be intimidating to sit in your living room with a new family member, whose background you may not even know. Over the many years that we’ve worked with…

Several comments to the last blog brought up the issue of Delta’s new policy of banning pets fed with “raw protein food” from being Delta Society Pet Partners. I’m guessing that although they were aware that an increasing number of people feed raw food to their pets, (Delta itself cites the “increasing use of raw…

Aubrey Fine’s new book on AAT just came out, Handbook on Animal-Assisted Therapy, and I am pleasantly surprised at how much of general interest is in it. If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile you might remember that Aubrey and I wrote a chapter for it together on “what therapists need to understand about…

Thanks for all the great comments about your experiences with dogs who are reactive, whether it’s to other dogs, or to people, or other objects. If you haven’t read the comments, here’s what comes out (at least to me) loud and clear: 1. There isn’t any one method that works for all dogs. Dogs are…

The seminar in Seattle was great fun, lots of good folks  and excellent questions from the audience. In the morning I talked about treatment for dog-dog reactivity, and I promised a summary of that on the blog. Here it is, with the obligatory caution that the morning itself wasn’t close to enough time to cover…

Earlier I mentioned a possible correlation between reactivity and vision problems, which got many of us thinking about the relationship between eyesight and reactive and/or fearful behavior in dogs. I had remembered that a researcher at UW-Madison did a study on eyesight in dogs, in which GSDs had an especially high rate of myopia, or…

Ah, lucky me. Last week I had two half hour lessons with Alisdair McRae, who I used to call “the Tiger Woods of Herding,” but well . . .  you know. Alisdair won Open on both Saturday and Sunday at the Portage Trial this weekend, which is pretty much par for the course with him.…

Those are the words of Dogen Zenji, a Zen master, quoted in one of my favorite books, Zen Miracles by Brenda Shoshanna. I repeat them here, because I think they have the power to ease life’s journey for all of us. The message is simple, but profound. Of course you, and everyone around you are…

Here’s the latest on Hope and Willie: Both Willie and Hope continued to be “spooky” to all number of things. This occurred both on and off the farm, and to all sorts of sights and sounds. Willie began high-arousal barking and lunging to other dogs when on leash, and off leash he growled and tooth…

Gail Caldwell’s new book, Let’s Take the Long Way Home, is nothing short of exquisite. It is a book for anyone who has had and lost a soul mate best friend, for anyone bonded to another by their love of dogs, or their need for another who understands them without explanation. It is a love…