Balance is a term used by sheep dog handlers, but I find myself thinking of its value in so many other contexts related to dogs. In sheep herding, "balance" refers to a dog's ability to place itself exactly where he or she needs to be to take control of the sheep without frightening them. It refers to two things really. One is the distance between the dog and the sheep. Too far away? -- no control, no pressure. Too close? -- forces the sheep to run away in a panic, or to turn and fight. Just right? Exactly at the point at which the sheep will turn and move away from the dog without panicking. The other aspect of balance is side to side, left to right. For example, does the dog stop at exactly the right place on an outrun to move the sheep directly toward you once he begins to walk Read More
Why I farm
Last Saturday my teenage ewe, Butterfinger, had her first lamb. I found her in the barn pen, licking off a slippery package of skin-covered bones covered with tiny whorls of wool and placental slime. Even though she was a first-time mom, she was a good one. She attended to her lamb just as she should, licking off the sack and clearing her head and nose first, nickering to her repeatedly, and standing patiently during the lamb's first wobbly attempts to find the faucet. After I had seen that things were going well and the lamb looked hardy and healthy, I dipped the umbilical cord in iodine, and my guests and I left them alone and walked up the old farm road to visit the rest of the flock grazing in the breeze at the top of the hill. When we came down the lamb seemed a bit weak; she'd Read More
New DVD on Animal Assisted Therapy!
We just released a DVD of the seminar I did in Naples, Florida on Animal Assisted Therapy and Activities, "Lending a Helping Paw." I'm excited about it, because it gives me the opportunity to help individuals and organizations who want to help others. It is an example of an activity we can do with our dogs that is a triple win (for us, our dogs, and people who need some oxytocin and/or physical therapy). Because of that, old social worker that I am, it's near and dear to my heart. Speaking of hearts, and what fills ours with happiness, the question arises about how effective AAT (Animal Assisted Therapy) and AAA (Animal Assisted Activities) really are. I remember a conference put on by the Delta Society many, many years ago that included a controversial study. It showed that, in this Read More
Don’t waste calories!
Well, this could be a blog about my as-yet-to-be-successful attempts to lose 10 pounds, but more on point, it's a discussion about the value of a dog's dinner in training and behavior modification. I am inspired to write this after seeing Kathy Sdao's seminar last January in Orlando, and reading her new book, Plenty in Life is Free. It's a really good book, in which her primary point is that the so-often-recommended "NILIF" (Nothing in Life is Free) programs recommended are based on a flawed assumption, and should be replaced with using Operant Conditioning to teach the behavior we want. I say "Here Here!" to that. It's just another version of dominance theory, and as Kathy argues, it can have a negative effect on the relationship between a dog and its owner. What I especially like Read More
Best. News. Ever.
Today, it's all about the farm. I had a blog written about the effect of acoustic environments on us and our dogs, some new products available for us to use to calm our dogs, and some new results of "calming" music that Katie and I have seen with our dogs. And then I erased it all with one key stroke. I'm sure that has never happened to you.... So I'll save that topic for later (and promise to catch up in the next month or so on other topics I've promised you, like exercises to calm the sympathetic nervous system, and the methods of the clicker versus no-clicker study ). Right now I have to get home to the dogs and work on the talk that Karen London and I are giving at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior next week in Phoenix. So here's the second half of the blog, Read More
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