This is the second installment of the Frisbee saga with Deuce and Rio. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was quite frustrated with the fact that they had no interest in going after the thrown less-than-perfect Frisbee and my frustration with this. The changes that I introduced in our following Frisbee sessions are…
Author: Almudena Ortiz Cue
Free Presentation: Help For Your Thunder-Phobic Dog
Thunder phobia in a dog can produce mild anxiety to a full-blown anxiety response. Since there are many factors that contribute to the thunder-phobic experience, and most of them out of our control, we must at least learn to create protocols to help our dogs better cope during a storm. When our dogs learn that…
Handling Our Frustration with Our Dog’s Behavior
Those of you who read my blog regularly know by now that I have been struggling with Deuce’s and Rio’s “performance” or interest when it comes to flying Frisbees. Well, this morning was one of those mornings. I am gathering the Frisbees and the energy to start working with these guys. Both Deuce and Rio…
Throw the Food Bowl Away!
It is one our dogs’ most salient instinct: to hunt/search for their food. They are indeed scavengers. The fact that some of the world’s dogs live their lives in a people’s world means lots of good stuff for these pups, such as them actually leading pretty “comfy” and safe lives that can also translate into…
Frustration
The dogs and I are playing our usual soccer game in the morning. I see Rio turn towards Deuce, as they both are trying to get to the orange ball, and she playfully grabs his tail in her mouth and gives it a tug. Deuce’s focus is on the ball and potentially landing so he’s…
Living In Harmony
I am meeting with first-time clients regarding inter-dog aggression in the home. This is one of those instances where I brace myself for potentially delivering news that the owners most likely do not want to hear. As I read through their questionnaire, I realized that their situation is not an easy one and that a…
Behavior Chains
John asks me in the morning how he can best teach Rio to jump from a “pretty” position. A pretty position is a dog sitting on her hind legs with the torso erect. As you can appreciate, this requires quite a bit of core strength and stability. I give John a few pointers – mostly…
Resource Guarding Between Dogs
I am having dinner while both dogs are chewing on their nightly chewy. Rio is sort of waiting for Deuce to finish his so that she can go explore to see if there is anything left that she can have. I notice this from the corner of my eye as Deuce comes into the kitchen…
Return on Investment
John and I are spending some time cleaning the leaves from the outside plants that are now living in our living room for the winter. I take a cloth with some water and I wipe off some white residue that stubbornly returns to the leaves even after we have sprayed them with some benign mix…
Other Measures of Success
Previously I wrote about ways by which we could ascertain if a behavior modification plan is actually working in changing the targeted behavior. Today, I’d like to expand on another reliable way of knowing whether success has been reached or even if we are on the right track. I recently met with a couple that…