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Do You Believe in Magic?

Cindy Bruckart | Thu, 02/25/2010 - 11:46

If you play your training cards right, your dog might! Believe me; your dog knows when you have a treat in your hand or in your pocket. Your dog also knows that sitting in the kitchen is more likely to result in a food treat than sitting in the bathroom. Experience proves it!

Your dog also knows the difference between a person with empty hands asking him to sit, and a person with a ready-to-throw ball asking him to sit.

You can baffle and amaze your dog into more reliable compliance with a bit of trickery. Simply pre-hide food treats and toys in places that your dog wouldn’t expect them. Place small containers of treats/kibble all around the house. Call your dog to the bathroom, ask him to sit and surprise him with a piece of freeze dried liver. “Wow! Where did that come from?!”

Puppy Love For Seniors

Kelly Gorman Dunbar | Thu, 02/25/2010 - 10:03

Another guest installment from my mother, Mary, who is now approximately one-year into life with a dog again. ~ Kelly

Coming home to an enthusiastic welcome, the jumping up, running in circles, and KISSES, KISSES, KISSES really beats coming home to an empty house. It is just about one year since we got our Rhodesian Ridgeback from Susan Tinch in Georgia. If you have been following the senior’s corner you know Leo was a rescue. When he came to us he was a resource guarder with high value items. Also, he had a hard-ish mouth, extreme carsickness, and still needed some basic training.

I still say this is a great deal for a couple to take on when they are in their retirement years. I believe that a little older dog that has been trained and is more settled is a better match.

Siblings and Roommates Don't Count

Cindy Bruckart | Wed, 02/24/2010 - 20:04

I’m often asking dog owners about their dog’s socialization history. Even if the dog owner tells me that their dog is “good with other dogs”, I have to ask more questions. Time and again, the dogs that their dog is good with include the siblings he played with at the breeder’s home, the dog he lives with and a relative’s dog. That’s it.

When I tell them that siblings and roommates don’t count, we get to the truth of the matter. The dog may be nearly a year old and have only met one or two other dogs, besides siblings and roommates. Now, I know that dog owners reading this might not see this as a big problem, as long as the dog was good with those dogs, we should be able to assume he’d be good with others, right? Wrong.

The Big Lie of More With Less

Eric Goebelbecker | Sun, 02/21/2010 - 15:30

It's popular — and pretty easy — to complain about our modern culture of instant gratification. Almost everything; the credit crisis, the obesity epidemic, the popularity of certain dog training TV shows, can be tied to our desire to get everything now-now-five-minutes-ago.

But instant gratification has a far uglier and more dangerous cousin. You don't see this cousin on TV or in big box stores - you see it at the office. It's "More With Less."

More With Less is the idea that a group or process is somehow inefficient and if we remove the excess...whatever...we won't just get the same results for less, we'll somehow get more. This idea is rampant in business, rampant enough that it was beautifully satirized in "The Wire" on HBO (and most likely watched by people that later went and tried to implement it at their jobs while believing the show didn't apply to them.)

SCIENCE-BASED DOG TRAINING (WITH FEELING)

Dr. Ian Dunbar | Tue, 02/16/2010 - 11:36

The development of off-leash, puppy/adolescent, socialization and training classes caused a paradigm shift in dog training away from the on-leash, physical restraint/prompt/punish methods of competition/working training to whelp an entirely new field of Pet Dog Training. However, after nearly 30 years, pet dog training is in dire need of re-invention. Off-leash, science based techniques were unparalleled for 20 years or so but over the past decade, pet dog training has gone downhill.

Working Like A Dog (That's a good thing when you love what you do!)

Dr. Nicholas H.... | Fri, 02/12/2010 - 16:01

My birthday has come and gone (Jan 29th). I am now a year older and looking at the big 65. How time flies when you’re having fun.

Adolescent Mouthing

Nicole S. Silvers | Thu, 02/11/2010 - 18:42

Who Do You Love?

Rachel Friedman | Thu, 02/11/2010 - 12:56

Valentine's Day is soon upon us. Formal and informal polls reveal that a lot of us out there put a significant amount of our emotional energy into our companion animal relationships. I really enjoyed reading about a recent global poll which reveals that 1 in 5 [1/5th] adults surveyed would prefer their pet than their partner.

I'm not very sentimental, but I do not take it for granted that I can spread my emotional and physical energy easily among both my human and animal loved ones and enjoy all. I live for perfect moments and most all of them come from some interaction of affection or connection or even awareness between myself and my inner core of people and the many dogs in my life.

Leash Walking Q&A:

Drayton Michaels | Wed, 02/10/2010 - 09:37

Leash Walking Q&A:

Walking in partnership with your dog. This is an excellent way to describe the paradigm of leash walking. Many times it is a question of doing the appropriate dance steps in concert with the dog. IE: Are you walking fast enough, are you not stopping for intense pulling, are you “working the dog” so the dog is attentive? Are you getting tangled up? As in many dog training context the dog walk is full of distractions, hence why it is many times a challenge. A partnership is intrinsically a more cooperative way to view leash walking as opposed to the militaristic view of old school leash walking.

Antisocialization: Help Your Dog Make Your Life Difficult

Nicole S. Silvers | Mon, 02/08/2010 - 13:56

Socialization, building a dog's ability to adapt to new experiences without fear, is recognized by most people as the fundamental skill a pet dog needs to acquire. It's a time-consuming process, but fairly simple. Your dog is rewarded for choosing to experience new things. Temple Grandin expressed the idea beautifully: fear and curiosity are opposites. Build curiosity, dampen fear.

If you wanted to make your dog completely anti-social, how would you do it? You'd convey the idea that anything new or interesting, anything that arouses curiosity, is very, very dangerous and painful. Every time your dog approached something, you'd zap the hell out it. If you were lazy, you'd construct a machine to do it for you. Lucky for you, such devices already exist: the Shock Collar "Fence". It's easier than ever to give your dog some serious fear-biter potential.