Dog Star Daily

Help Every Puppy Get the Education They Deserve

Please, please, PLEASE help us make sure every new puppy gets the education they desperately need and deserve this holiday season.

Resolving Dog-Dog Reactivity

FOR A LIMITED TIME Watch the all-new Dunbar Academy Dog-Do

New Free Course – Six Simple Steps to Solve Your Dog's Behavior Problems

We've just published a new FREE course on Dunbar Academy called Six Simple Steps to Solve Your Dog's Behavior Problems

Puppies and Shelter Dogs: Two Sides of the Same Coin

I am a dog trainer and I lead a double life. Of sorts. Behaviorally speaking.

The 2 Most Common Mistakes Dog Owners Make (and How to Fix Them)

There are a couple of mistakes that dog owners frequently make which are simple to fix and have the potential to dramatically improve a dog's behavior.

All Puppies Deserve a FIRST Chance — an EDUCATION!

Owners and their new puppies are still getting the short end of the stick.

Ian Dunbar

Advocacy Overdrive - How social networking can create change and save dogs.

Drayton Michaels | Tue, 06/01/2010 - 08:47

With the touch of a button on a computer or a phone anyone can disseminate information or voice an opinion. This simple yet powerful act can transform the direction of politics, save cities and towns money and essentially save the lives of dogs. Now that’s pretty cool.

A few cases in point are recent victories in the area of Breed Specific Legislation in NJ (which at the state level declares breed specific laws unconstitutional) and Ohio, which if you know about BSL you know Ohio is one of the worst states.

On May 11th Garfield NJ attempted to enact a Dangerous Dog Ordinance due to recent incidents involving Pit Bull dogs. No humans were killed. A small child was bitten due to approaching a strange dog on leash. Though no one was hurt severely, the reason these incidents occurred was that the humans were not doing the right things. However the overblown hyperbolic press and the emotional outrage of the victims led the city council to “do something”.

Treating your dog like your kids? Let’s hope so!

Karen Wild | Fri, 05/28/2010 - 23:52

It’s often the case that you hear a criticism levelled at some dog owners. The reason, it is stated, that their dogs do not behave is this: ‘The dog is their baby’. The owner can rather tragi-comically be portrayed cuddling the dog and buying it diamante accessories. Everybody shakes their heads in disbelief. This apparently leads to all sorts of unwanted behaviours in the dog. The dog is sometimes then punished – it is ‘spoilt’, ‘naughty’, ‘cosseted’. The list goes on. The statement is ‘This dog behaves like this because they treat it like a child’.

And yet, I always felt a certain unease with the comparison. I work with dogs and I work with children. Some of them – in both groups - are pretty tough to handle! In children, what we might call ‘challenging behaviours’ can be highly disruptive and interfere with group activities, or with their own learning.

With All Due Respect

Gillian Ridgeway | Mon, 05/24/2010 - 12:55

Respect is a word that is often tossed around lightly. In the dog training community it is a word that is gaining in popularity by leaps and bounds. We want our dogs to respect us, that is a given. It is a term used by trainers of every method, but thought of quite differently amongst each other. Yes, we need to teach our dogs how to be respectful, but it is now time to also look at the respect we should give back in return.

Respect means to avoid harming, degrading, insulting or injuring someone. It means we should treat with consideration, which in turn means we should be careful not to cause hurt. In looking at this word a bit closer, we can see that it can have a different meaning depending on your view as a dog or your view as the dog owner.

A New Web Presence For a 2nd Decade of Business

Rachel Friedman | Sun, 05/23/2010 - 06:03

THE NEW WEB PRESENCE OF A BETTER PET LLC

Welcome to the new look of A Better Pet LLC. Let me introduce you to Flick (nee Chipper), the black and white dog that graces the top of the website.

Flick’s earliest months are unknown. He was found wandering in a metropark as an approximately 3 month old wide eyed stray pup by a lovely South Euclid professional couple, Patricia and Jim, out for an innocent walk back in the early spring 2002.

Consistency is the Key

Eric Goebelbecker | Sat, 05/22/2010 - 19:16

I have been having a terrible time recovering from my knee surgery. It seems like every time I head in for physical therapy there's a new ache or pain in a newly discovered part of my right leg. The doctor tells me it all boils down to one problem: I'm not being consistent with my exercises. Without that consistency, I won't just fail to make progress. I'll continue to regress.

There's no secret to dog training, but there certainly is a key: consistency.

I often refer to dogs as "pattern matching machines." I'm being facetious – of course I think of dogs as more than machines – but dogs are very good at recognizing and storing patterns. It makes sense too: predators and scavengers that can quickly recognize where prey or food might or might not be are rewarded by nature.

The three D’s of dog training and why you need to know about them

Drayton Michaels | Wed, 05/19/2010 - 12:27

The three D’s of dog training are known as Distraction, Distance and Duration. They come into play in every context and all training exercises.

Distractions are part of life especially for dogs. Let’s face it a dog can be distracted by just about anything from the high value food reward to the wind blowing leaves. Distractions are part of dog training no matter what, so we might as well begin to work with them and take them into account.

Always start with the lowest amount of distraction and build on it as your dog does better with the training.

For example, if you are working on down stays, get the dog rock solid in the house and the back yard before attempting the down stays at the barbecue at your neighbor’s house.

Distractions are often the reason for the dog breaking the stay, or tuning out or becoming frustrated.

Embedded thumbnail for (Part 1) Dianna Buck– 3 Training Tips

The CDC has some interesting information on their site.

As I have discussed before, children are the individuals most at risk for bites. But according to the CDC, men are bit more often than women. Interesting, especially given my post last week.

They also include a great list of tips for children. Here are a few of them.