Forget The Force
The highlight of my day is the walk I take in the woods with my dogs and any boarders staying with me. The route takes us past three houses, one where the owner routinely comes out with treats for the dogs. Yesterday it was left over sausages. Beyond these houses are hundreds of acres of ...
Palatability
We'd be foolish handing chunks of carrot to a baby with no teeth. If we want young children to eat vegetables it makes sense to start them off with those which are less bitter and easy to chew. When we invite people over for dinner we try to prepare a meal that they ...
Training Samantha
This spring I made plans to meet friends from junior high school who I had not seen for years. I went through collections of old photographs to look for images of our youthful faces back in the seventies to help us reminisce. I found a number of poorly composed, out of focus, faded pictures that ...
Keeping Perspective
This past weekend after a presentation I had given at a nearby humane society, a trainer in attendance was kind enough to approach me and compliment on the work I had done with Sunny. I'm not bringing it up to brag, it was just that having someone who understood the challenges of working with a ...
Articles on Examiner.com
In case I have forgotten to mention, I am writing dog training and behavior articles for Examiner.com. Thanks for stopping by and please share them with your dog loving friends looking for information about the most effective and humane ways to train their dogs.
It Doesn’t Have To Be Tough Love
Last spring I took care of a friend's dog, a young Rottie, named Abby. Abby was living in a family with a senior Rottie and 3 young children. She was a great dog and any challenging behaviors could be chalked up to age and inexperience. While she was with us I treated her as I ...
Edges & Flexibility
After a too-long hiatus a group of us started our weekly yoga classes on Friday. During class, while seated in a particularly challenging hip-opening posture the instructor gave us this piece of advice regarding stretching, "You earn the trust of your body by respecting its edges." As I do with many things I immediately thought ...
It Doesn’t Matter If It’s Not Scary To You
A common misconception that dog owners have is that they, or other dogs, can show their fearful dog, that something is safe. While a dog that is merely inexperienced in a situation may take cues from other dogs regarding how it should feel about or behave around something new and scary, a fearful dog will ...
It’s A Dance
Sunny is one of those fearful dogs that will likely never be totally comfortable with people. He spent the first year of his life in the company of dogs, not people. The mental and emotional development that occurs during that time of life for dogs is important for their ability to interact socially with whatever ...
