We are at the vet’s office having Rio’s bandage changed when an acquaintance walks through the doors with her dog. Her dog appears somewhat shaken-up and has a bloody injury close to his eye. “What happened?” I inquired. They tell me that this is the fifth time their dog has been attacked by their other…
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…
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…
This morning I proceed to gather what is needed for the morning exercise routine for the dogs. We begin as we always do, but I notice shortly thereafter that Deuce is taking a rest after almost every retrieve of the ball. Later on, Rio sort of bails out on our favorite game. Huh? I am…
A few months back I wrote about the “why” questions: People love “why” questions. Perhaps because we are curious, because we think “why” questions help us understand our own dog better (which sometimes they do, of course!) but most of the time it’s because we’d much rather our dog not do something and we think…
I am reading an article in Outside magazine titled “The Metric System” about exercise gadgets and studies as to why most people abandoned the gadget altogether. One of the reasons why this happens according to John Bartholomew, professor of Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin, who specializes in exercise psychology, is because…
I was recently quite frustrated with the fact that my dogs had no interest in going after the thrown less-than-perfect Frisbee, that I had to introduce changes in their playtime. The changes that I introduced in our following Frisbee sessions are all based on principles of animal learning which everyone wanting to work with animals…