Paws & Effect

04/02/2018

Very informative and helpful podcast featuring Dr. Susan Freidman. It touched on a lot of training issues I'm working through with my adolescent pup.

Take a behind-the-scenes look at the reality of dog training, behavior, teaching, and learning. We love our dogs, we love our jobs, but sometimes it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. Sometimes at the end of the day, you just need a drink and friend who gets it. We’ll keep it fun, keep it real, an...

03/05/2018

The myth of canine guilt

03/03/2018

Neutering and the age at which a dog is neutered may affect the animal’s risk for developing certain cancers and joint diseases,

01/23/2018

A great post with important insights into nose work training.

"But he never does this at home---"

How often have we seen and heard this one, in one form or another?

Someone's horse is doing or not doing something at a clinic, that it either should not or should be doing, and out comes the "he never does this" excuse.

Well, he's doing it now.

Almost as if the clinic or clinician is at fault.

Interesting psychology, some people have, to always need to shift the responsibility, instead of acknowledging the problem, and taking steps to try to make it better.

12/08/2017

Wow!

11/27/2017

11/26/2017

It looks like dog DNA has evolved in lockstep with our DNA. A new study finds evidence in Nigeria's street dogs.

11/04/2017

Many dogs suffer anxiety and fear from the loud bangs and explosions of firework displays. A new study shows how a medicinal treatment can help alleviate common fear behaviors, such as trembling and whining.

10/28/2017

Physiological arousal can help consolidate a dog's memories after training.

10/01/2017

"A clue that dogs have learned a simple discrimination solution during pseudo-MTS training, at the expense of learning about the matching relationship, involves avoidance of the scent sample when it is presented. Although novice dogs actively sniff the scent sample, a common observation among dogs trained with pseudo-MTS arrangements is resistance to scent sample presentation. Some speculation of why dogs resist scent sample presentation, assumes the scent sample is offensive when it is held under a dog’s nose. However, an alternative explanation of the change in behavior, from initial attention to subsequent resistance, is that dogs initially notice the scent sample but during pseudo-MTS training, more readily acquired simple discrimination solutions overshadow learning about the matching relationship between the scent sample and matching comparison. That is, during pseudo-MTS training, dogs learn the scent sample is redundant. They learn the scent sample does not signal anything that is not already perfectly predicted by the simple discrimination solutions not controlled against. Thus, dogs learn to ignore the scent sample, which retards learning about the matching relationship."

Here transfer performance is contrasted with baseline training performance to determine whether a relational solution strategy is learned from the systematic pseudo matching-to-sample procedures commonly used to train human-scent-matching dogs. Evidence indicates that due to the lack of constraints…

09/22/2017

Aggressive behaviors in companion dogs are a serious problem to owners, which often result in important physical and emotional damage on the victims. Aggressive incidents frequently happen during human-dog interactions (i.e., reaching toward the dog or petting it) while the dog is engaging with a pr...

09/21/2017

We've all heard about the incredible power of a dog's nose. Search and rescue dogs locate victims trapped under feet of rubble; K-9s track down fleeing suspects; and detection dogs alert to the presence of explosives, drugs, or other materials. But did you know that there are other uses for a dog's…