News, Advice and Resources for Thoughtful Pet People
Wow, I admire this Bernese Mountain Dog’s focus. Some drunk creep in Bavaria got what he deserved—his nose was bitten off by the the dog he shot. The gunman called police because he was bleeding profusely. The dog had the bullet removed and survived. Police couldn’t find the jerk’s nose and think the dog ate it.
Karen Pryor will be on GMA Tuesday the 16th between 8:30am-9am demonstrating clicker training and promoting her new book, Reaching The Animal Mind.
Clicker Training is a force-free, non-coercive way to train your pets (cats too). In the training stage, it relies on using a “clicker” to specifically mark the behavior you want—sit, down, etc. Karen Pryor was an early adopter of clicker training with pets and has popularized it with a number of excellent books.
Dyno, a 1 week old Cocker Spaniel puppy, was rescued from a sewage pipe after accidentally being flushed down a toilet in England. How does a puppy get accidentally flushed? It can happen when a 4 yr. old child has unsupervised access to a puppy and tries to give it a bath. The local plumbing company was critical in the rescue using a camera to locate the puppy 20 yards from the house. They then prodded the soggy pup down the pipe to a manhole where he was pulled the safety. Little Dyno was named after the plumbing company, Dyno Rod.
A new study finds the guilt we see on our dogs’ faces may not signify guilt at all. In the study, owners were asked to tell their dog not to eat a treat and then they left the room. While the owner was out of the room, sometimes the dog was given the treat and others were not. Then the owners were sometimes told their dog was obedient and didn’t take the treat and sometimes the owner was told the dog did take the treat. What the owners were told was often not the truth.
If owners thought their dog looked guilty, it was due to the scientist telling them the dog had taken the treat and not to whether the dog had actually taken the treat. Dogs looked most “guilty” if their owners scolded them.
In fact, dogs that had been obedient and had not eaten the treat, but were scolded by their (misinformed) owners, looked more “guilty” than those that had, in fact, eaten the treat.
Next time you think your dog looks guilty, remember it’s your doing.
A German dog fetched a live WWII grenade last weekend. Fortunately he was trained and set it down on command. “Drop It” is an important thing to teach your dog even if they’re much more likely to pick up a dead animal or another dog’s toy than a grenade.Here’s a really good tutorial on how to teach your dog to “Drop It’ or “Leave It” using non-coercive techniques.
Check out this really helpful tutorial on training your dog not to pull. We solved the problem using the Easy Walk Harness and here’s a tutortial on using no-pull harnesses.
(Note: I’m not affiliated with PetExpertise. I have ordered a number of things from them and find Jess’ articles well written.)