First, watch the video of Katie’s young Leo trying to get an older Mastiff, Herk, to play. (You’ll know who is who, trust me!) Second, take a minute to wipe the tears from your eyes because you were laughing so hard. Third, think about all the ways you’ve seen dogs try to initiate play with…

Surely our mutual love of play is one of the reasons that dogs and people get along so well. As Karen London and I write in Play Together, Stay Together, “Play is powerful stuff. It influences so many things, including development, motivation, emotions, physiology, communication and behavior. Wow! That’s an impressive list.” After years working…

Last weekend Jim, Willie, Tootsie and I stayed in a lovely log cabin owned by friends in the woods in eastern Wisconsin. I mention that because for the first time in her nine years of life, Tootsie got to run off leash in an unfenced area off the farm. Wooo Hooo! Some people might not…

We all know the signs of imminent danger between two dogs right? Immobile stiff bodies, direct eye contact, round eyes. Except when dogs are playing and then the exact same postures and expressions are nothing but pauses between frolics. That is a perfect example of what’s called meta-communication, or communication about communication. Here’s a video…

On Friday I asked you what you thought was going on here, at least as best one could tell from a still photograph. I’m the first to agree it’s hard to say much from one brief moment in time, but it’s a great exercise nonetheless. It helps us all focus our attention and generate hypothesis…

A colleague just sent me a link to one of my favorite science and behavior blogs, that of Harold Herzog, the author of  Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think  Straight About Animals. I use his book in my University class, The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal…

I was recently reminded that my first national book, The Other End of the Leash, was published in June of 2002, ten years ago (thank you Lisa). Wow. Ten years. It feels like a long time, and it feels like the years have flown by. Time is like that. There’s something about big blocks of…

We’re happy to introduce Karen London, Ph.D. as a guest blogger for The Other End of the Leash this week!  Enjoy! If people go running by your home accompanied by their cats, geckos, ferrets, parrots, or rats, then you live in a very different neighborhood, perhaps even a different world, than I do. It’s just…

Eeeps, where’d the day go? I was going to write about the emotion of disgust, but it’ll have to wait til tomorrow. But before the day is over I wanted to remind you that the Early Registration for the Jan 7-8 seminar I’m doing with Kathy Sdao is over tonight at midnight. I’m doing a…

Here’s TOOTSIE! Also known as: Little Bit, Mini Me and my favorite, Mop of the Woods. There’s a new kid on the block, or at the farm I should say. Meet Tootsie, a 7 year old King Charles Cavalier who was rescued by Lucky Star Cavalier Rescue from an Amish Puppy Mill, after the owners…

Happy dog, happy baby, happy Easter and spring weekend, everyone:

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…

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…

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,…

I’m at the Best Friends Forever Conference in Pennsylvania, taking a quick break from the talks. I have to say that this is one of the best seminars I’ve attended: the quality of the talks is outstanding. Suzanne Hetts gave one today that was fantastic: absolutely the best organized and most informative talk on what…

We’re still all about toys at the office, given the boxes and boxes of them that arrived last week. And there’s nothing like having a new puppy in the house to get you back to thinking about toys! A great happy surprise has been that the toy we were afraid would live on our shelves…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

4 pm: Well, the plan was to do some research on muzzle punches (and pokes, and jabs), tooth clacking and air snaps, and then write another post about them . . . but then, the sun came out after days and days of cold, windy rain. Right now it’s gorgeous and breezy and 4 o’clock…

With apologies for the change in topics, I just have to respond to a comment on my last post, and to the hundreds of comments I’ve heard over the last 20 + years, about the guilt associated with putting a dog down. It is always wrenching, heart-breaking to euthanize a beloved dog, but taking a…

As many of you know, Will has a bad shoulder and he can’t play fetch or flying disc without problems. If I just work him on sheep and take him on long walks we can keep it under control, but the “short stopping” associated with fetching aggravates whatever is wrong with his shoulder. (I haven’t…

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…

I’ve loved reading your comments about favorite dog toys. You all inspired me to take a photo of Willie and his current favorites. . . From Left to Right, back row, the toys are: Brain Twister (long, green thing, Canine Genius), Chewber (red disc), Invincible Rings (blue & black rings, JW Pet), Skinneez Stuffingless Dog…

At the risk of sounding self-serving, I wanted to write about Willie’s new favorite toy. We do sell it on the website, but we sell it because our dogs think it is the best thing that happened since liver and chicken. It’s called a Canine Genuis Brain Twister, presumably because it was designed for dogs…

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…

The seminar in Arroyo Grande was great fun; the hosts at Gentle Touch Pet Training could not have been kinder, more supportive or better organized. The afternoon half day session on Play was a joy–and all that work creating a new seminar felt well worth it by the end of the day. During the Play…

I can’t write much, I’ve been deep in preparation for the new seminars I’m doing in Arroyo Grande at Gentle Touch Pet Training this Sunday and we’re leaving for the airport in a few hours. Predictably, we are in the usual flurry of last minute packing, house sprucing and training of new house sitter. As…

Not going to write much, am a bit tuckered from doing an all day seminar at Happy Tails in Portland and an evening speech at Planet Dog in Portland, Maine. Both events were hosted by great folks and had educated, informed audiences that were a joy to work with. The talk at Planet Dog was…

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…

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…

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?”

Two more posts about play from presentations at APDT: this one about play between people and dogs, and a post coming on Friday regarding Karen London’s presentation on using play to treat aggression-related behavior problems. I spoke in the afternoon about play between people and dogs. It’s a rich topic, with many nuances and complexities,…

Pia Silvani’s, Director of Behavior and Training at St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in New Jersey, gave a talk at APDT that focused on play between adult dogs, and it was a fantastic presentation. The best part of the talk was her videos of dogs playing–both appropriately and inappropriately. My absolute favorite was a video…

Camille Ward and  Barbara Smuts gave a fascinating talk at the APDT Play Symposium on “Play and the Development of Social Relationships in Litters of Domestic Dogs.” Their research (and that of their colleague, Erika Bauer) has focused on play in the domestic dog. They discussed two issues related to play in both puppies and…

I thought you might be interested in two of the books I am using as references for my talks on play behavior. One is Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative and Ecological Perspectives, by Marc Bekoff and John Byers. It’s not new, (1998) but it is considered a classic in the field. Bekoff has done a lot…

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…

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…

Oh, what a joy to be home in fall on the farm. It may have rained much of the weekend, but that’s okay, we needed the moisture. In spite of the rain I got to spend much of Sunday out in the country with Willie, Lassie and weekend visitor Brody (the Cavalier) out in the…

Monday, 5:16 pm.  Well, I had planned to write something wise and witty about dogs, people and play. I was inspired by the closing ceremonies of the Olympics (finally I can get some sleep, but I’m going to  miss them, darn!), and found myself thinking more about how important play is between people and dogs.…

I’m a little behind today, because yet again I stayed up too late watching the Olympics.  Addicting, aren’t they? And I’m not even that interested in sports… I was the girl who stood in right field in enforced elementary school softball games saying “Please don’t hit the ball to me, please don’t hit the ball…