The short answer is no, not always. As a matter of fact, our ability to attribute human characteristics to non-human animals is an impressive ability that we should be proud of. In addition, it can make us better dog owners. Lest you think I’ve lost my mind, let me explain, this time with a longer…

This poem was written by a friend and colleague, Catherine Young. I hadn’t seen her in awhile, and then ran into her at a local coffee shop, where she handed me an envelope with a poem she’d written in it. Oh thanks, I said, focused on other issues at the time. I stuffed the envelope…

It’s not just us that sees our dogs as family; apparently, dogs see us as family too. This may not be shocking news to many of us, but it is always good to look at our beliefs objectively. An interesting study was recently published on Plos One about whether dogs are attached to their owners…

One of the best things about being an author is being sent pre-publication copies of books. It’s great fun to see what’s going to be out on the bookshelves and eReaders in a couple of months. (Of course, one of the worst things about being an author is being sent pre-pub copies of books. They…

We all know about the “Black Dog Syndrome,” the belief that all black dogs are harder to place from shelters and rescues than dogs of other colorations. I’ll admit that when I first heard about it I didn’t question whether it was true. For one thing, when I bred Border Collie puppies I saw a…

This is Part II of our case study about helping a dog after a loss (see August 24th blog for Part I). As usual, many of you came up with  insightful and helpful comments. I benefit from your thoughtfulness every day, and I thank you for it. If you are interested in this topic, either…

Lots of you liked the idea of doing some case studies, as well as reviewing and discussing photos and videos. I think it’s a great idea, so here goes our first one: Here’s Sleeves on the left, and Patch on the right. I’m sad to report that Patch died just last week and her sister…

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…

If you’ve been following last week’s blog and the comments, you know that there’s been an active discussion about whether dogs can (or can’t) form “true” friendships. This was motivated by an article in Time Magazine by Carl Zimmer that discussed the evidence of friendship in several species of mammals, including dolphins, baboons and horses.…

My posts will be a bit shorter and perhaps less frequent in the next few weeks, but I couldn’t resist passing on a blog post from Bark Magazine that gave me the best laugh of the week. It’s about a reported (so yes, this is a story about a story about a story) who read…

See the dog, not the story. This is a quote from one of your colleagues, a blog reader who sent this in as a comment about dogs in rescue. (And who I should credit, but because I’m in a time crisis, I can’t right now, but THANKS! and I will find your name when I…

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…

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,…

A quick post today, trying to catch up before I leave for Toronto on Friday.  Sunday at the BFF conference was great, I’ll write a post soon about Pam Reid’s talks on cognition, her talk about stress, and Emily Levine’s talk on compulsive disorders in dogs.  All of them were great, very valuable. I thought…

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…

Lassie went home today. I am thinking of the famous story about Hemingway, in which he challenged his writer friends to write the shortest story possible. All agreed that he won. Here’s what he wrote: For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn. Since then, summarizing one’s life in six words has become something of a parlor…

A friend and colleague (Toni Ziegler, an internationally known primatologist) sent me an article in a journal I usually never see, Hormones and Behavior, and I was sure you’d be as interested in it as I am. The authors, M. Nagasawa et. al., found a correlation between the level of an owner’s oxytocin and how…

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…

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…

There’s an interesting discussion going on, on-line, in my university course right now. One of the students asked why some people like non-human animals more than they do members of their own species. There are some extremely interesting comments posted to that question, especially about animals being ‘innocents’ rather than moral agents who can choose…

I started teaching my University of Wisconsin course yesterday, titled “The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships.” It is, granted, a lot of work, but I love doing it. I love the intellectual stimulation it creates, and I love working with 150 smart, motivated young people with minds like steel traps (okay, most of them)…

Much warmer now, might even be up to 20 degrees. Wow, feels like an entirely different place. The lambs are doing beautifully. On Sunday Jim and I opened up the panel dividing the two ewes with lambs and let them all in together. We wanted to wait to be sure that the lambs were well…

Tall Two Leg Female can’t write today, because she is busy arranging for my very special birthday party. If it is anywhere around Is It Time for Dinner Yet? time, then I am getting the attention that I so deserve as you read this. I am sorry that Tall Two Leg Female and Tall Two…

I am fascinated by your posts about differences in training with male and female dogs (or not.) I’ll keep reading, and in a few weeks I’ll summarize what you’ve all said on another post. But just to add to the fire, I want to ask another question about male and female dogs, but this time…

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,…

I’m off in an hour to Virginia to do the For the Love of a Dog seminar on Saturday (about emotions in people and dogs) and a half day version of Both Ends of the Leash (focusing on how OUR behavior influences that of our dogs). Both seminars are fulfilling to do, I love doing…

I’m getting pretty bleary this mid-afternoon, having stayed up late last night, like much of the country, watching the election returns. As the evening progressed, I found myself on the floor, with Lassie on one side, and Willie on the other. Both of my paws were busy, stroking and petting my dogs non-stop, in my…

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…

I was working on my new book, coming out from Dogwise in early November, and found a section that relates, I suspect, to the cancellation of my radio show, Calling All Pets. The book, coming out from Dogwise, (Tales of Two Species) is a collection of my columns from Bark magazine. One of them is…