There is something called “learned irrelevance” and if you live with dogs you have experienced this my friends. You have also experienced the opposite: your dog realizing that what is happening at the moment is frankly quite relevant to them. Learned irrelevance refers to our dogs becoming keen observers of circumstances that mean nothing relevant from…
I am behind closed doors taking some quiet time in. My rambunctious board & train just realized that I am in my bedroom and she is adamant to get in. I do my best to ignore her barking at the door. I begin counting: 1,2,3,… I manage to not acknowledge her barking. She stops the barking but begins to whine….
As it’s ringing, I pick up the phone almost mindlessly only to hear a female voice speaking at 1,000 miles an hour with little room for intervention on my part. I try to interject now that I realize this is a telemarketing type of call by saying that I am not interested in this conversation…
I am going through my morning routine. The dogs have been fed and now I am hustling a bit to get ready myself. John is with us and he is going back and forth from his home office and the kitchen. The dogs, meanwhile, do what they do most mornings once they have had their…
It is unfortunate that the idea that we can reinforce fear in our pets is still so prevalent. Frankly, nothing can be further from the truth. Think about this: Fear is an emotion, involuntary for the subject feeling it, so how then can we make a dent on it by consoling our pet? This is…
Life is really an ongoing set of evaluations and negotiations affecting those that are part of our lives, be it a child, friend, parent, and even our pets. If reaching a consensus where all parties get something they want or need is difficult, imagine when there is one silent partner “sitting at the negotiation table.”…
Resource guarding of anything that a dog considers valuable is normal dog behavior. It goes back to- you guess it, evolution. Dogs are opportunistic feeders and scavengers. In other words, in the wild, dogs do not know when their next meal will appear so they eat when food becomes available. In addition, they are scavengers…
When it comes to any behavior including dog bites, looking at the context surrounding the episode will give us some very much-needed information. What I am saying is that not all bites are the same. Even sometimes people cannot even agree on what they call a bite. This is the typical example of a herding…
Hello Pet Guardians, Going, going, gone! If you are thinking about joining the Playing and Teaching Boundary Games dog training class, do so now! Registration closes soon and there are only a few spots left! Watch the video on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umxjhRm9gKU Learn more here: https://chacodogtraining.com/event/playing-and-teaching-boundary-games/?instance_id=5667&fbclid=IwAR3mcEF_Om1_RtBe4w8iRxWr0zg53-GZb6cePaV2sfBpqUOaX08GnO_F-pU What do your dogs do when the doorbell rings? Or…
For some dogs impulse control at the front door is literally mission impossible. Rio is one of those dogs! Her impulse control in other circumstances such as waiting to be released to go after a toy is superb. The reason behind the lack of impulse control at the front door could be for a myriad…