Last week, before the most recent eldercare emergency cropped up, I did a bunch of research into housing and care solutions for my mom and her husband (another long, stressful story). Since many of
you may find yourself in similar situations someday, I thought I might offer a couple helpful ideas. …
This is another thing I came across on Twitter. It’s a site called I’m Tired Of … that sells a bunch of different bracelets (made from recycled tires) and t-shirts that help promote various causes. They donate some
of the proceeds to charities. In addition rallying against diseases (like breast cancer, diabetes, etc.) and cultural issues such as discrimination, they have some that say
A puzzling news item came to me via a fellow writer/blogger last week. Stephanie Stiavetti, who blogs about gluten-free cooking over at Wasabimon, alerted me that the October issue of Behavioural Processes (a journal of animal behavior research) includes a study that seems to show dogs CANNOT detect deception in people. Here, many of us are thinking that our oh-so-sensitive and instinctual canine pals are good judges of character, but in the study’s set-up, dogs did not distinguish in any significant way people who were being honest with them (about the location …
This New York Times Magazine article on anxiety chronicles pioneering research, going back some 20 years, into the innate tendency of some people to be more anxious than others. A few things revealed in the article amused me, including the commonalities I see between parenting an anxious child and training an anxious dog. And, here is the kicker … dog people like us know the “right” answer. …
Lilly loaded up and went with me to run errands on Tuesday. When the weather allows, I use the frequent stops as part of our ongoing transition training (where Lilly learns to hop of the out car in a variety of locations, SIT, and relax quickly … thanks to classical conditioning). That continues to go well, but I’m always surprised how many dogs we see traveling the canyon, the highways, and local roads completely unrestrained in the car. Roadworthy, my recent article for the AKC Gazette, addresses this safety issue. …
Back in 2005, researchers from the Animal Behavior Center in Spokane, Washington, and from the Spokane County Regional Animal Shelter published a study on the affects of the sounds of dog laughter on stress behavior in shelter dogs. It got a fair bit of media attention at the time, including this segment from ABC news. Over the weekend, I captured video of Lilly laughing as Tom roughhouses and tickles her tummy. Take a look and listen. Notice in the video that Tom makes the ah-ah-ah dog laughter sound back to Lilly, and she indeed seems to …
A shout out to my friend Audrey for sending me this research on how women handle stress differently than men. Apparently women “tend and befriend” to overcome feelings of “fight or flight.” …
Thanks to my dog friends on Twitter, I learn about some interesting dog news. Here is a round up of things I thought you might enjoy, including when dogs look guilty, shock collar warnings, a good background piece on how dogs learn, and a dog who knows lots of tricks. …
Playing fetch with your dog is a good idea for a bunch of reasons. It burns off lots of monkey energy. It lets dogs exercise the chase part of prey drive. In Lilly’s case, it also lets her exercise the gathering instinct since border collies are a herd fetching breed more than they are a driving breed, like our Australian shepherd pal Pitsch. But, maybe the best part of playing fetch is that you can practice three training cues in the process. …
On Friday, Mary over at Cowgirl by Proxy wondered about the dog training classes we take. I wrote a long, detailed response in the comments, which promptly got eaten by my blog software. I’ll do my best to recreate those thoughts here. For several years now, we have trained exclusively with Gigi Moss in Boulder, CO, who is the ONLY dog trainer who did not give up on us because of Lilly’s fears. We are very loyal clients and would be completely lost without her support, wisdom, and patience. …
