Who Owns Your Website?

You might have seen the recent story about the lawsuit over the website “Sammy and the City”.  The site was created by the dog’s owner, his sister, and his now ex-girlfriend.  The site contains stories, pictures, and videos of the little dog as he and his owners visit various landmarks in and around Manhattan. Several…

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Pet Behavior Consults as Scientific Experiments

How Thinking of a Behavior Consultation as a Science Experiment Can Improve Success Your first thought may be that you are trying to help people with their pets’ behavior problems, not trying to discover a new truth through experimentation.  And you are correct in terms of your primary goal being to help your client.  But…

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The Power of Focus

We just finished another mentoring session, helping one of our Behavior Education Network members develop a plan to follow-up with clients whose dog has multiple problems.  This dog needs help with his behavior when visitors come to the door, on walks, in the backyard when the neighbors are out, when he sees or passes joggers…

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Alternatives to Social Dominance in Dogs

         After predominating thinking about the social behavior of dogs for over 60 years, dominance theory (or pack theory) is finally on the decline.  A number of authorities have argued against the application of dominance theory to dogs, but nowhere is the theory more persuasively debunked than in John Bradshaw’s recent book  Dog Sense.   Bradshaw marshals…

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Cats Working With Rats To Find Landmines?

No doubt you have heard about dogs that have been trained to find landmines.  There are millions of live mines all over the world, placed in the last 70 years during wars, insurrections and even by criminals such as drug dealers. Dogs have proven to be very successful at helping to locate landmines that can…

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Guidelines and Ideas for Responsible Pet Ownership

    Everyone talks about responsible pet ownership but just exactly what that consists of isn’t very clear. It means different things to different people.  Now, two very influential organizations, The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the American Kennel Club (AKC), have created guidelines for responsible pet ownership that make this idea more concrete. These guidelines…

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How Professional Are You?

Dog trainers typically don’t receive the professional recognition most of them deserve.  There are many reasons for this, ranging from the lack of a generally accepted educational pathway for becoming a trainer, to disagreements about methods,  “philosophy”, and what body of knowledge and skills any professional trainer should possess.

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Helping Pets Cope With Stress

We use the term “stress” in everyday language to refer to all kinds of unpleasant situations or our reaction to those situations.  My dog is stressed when she has to go to the veterinarian, I get stressed-out when my work piles up, my cat can get distressed if she is out in the sun too…

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Dog Behavior and Preventing Dog Bites

In February, Dr. Hetts had the privilege of working with the Denver NBC affiliate – 9News.com – on a series about dog behavior and communication.  The station decided to do the series because of the tragic bite to 9News anchor Kyle Dyer that happened unfortunately during a live newscast.  In an attempt to have some good…

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Fear Runs the Show

In our ‘Helping Fearful Animals” webinar course, fear is not only an emotion, but also has physiological and behavioral components.  When fear is triggered in any animal – including humans, many of the responses are quite involuntary. Suzanne was reminded of this when she got up in the middle of the night recently to let…

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