Reading Time: 3 minutes Once a dog starts escaping a yard, it can become a habit. This is because when your dog leaves, there’s potential for a grand and rewarding adventure. Here’s what to do to keep your dog safe.
Category: Training & Grooming
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Seek Back is used by police to send a dog to search a large area where a crime may have been committed. A trained dog will search methodically, quartering the area and searching back and forth, the way you might mow a lawn, so they don’t miss a spot. Once they find something that […]
Categories
Get Shed of Pet Fur
Reading Time: 3 minutes Is shedding a big hairy deal at your house? Our black German Shepherd used to shed drifts of hairy tumbleweeds that turned cream carpet to gray. Now Bravo the Bullmastiff’s short red hairs transform our socks into fuzzy slippers. Karma-Kat’s short silver fur and Shadow-Pup’s gray undercoat cling to upholstery and clothing, and float through […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes Being a show dog is the canine equivalent of entering beauty contests. There are many levels to work through. Getting to Westminster (which has been postponed this year due to the pandemic), the National Dog Show, or one of the other large benched shows is like being in the finals for Miss America! The road […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’d just taken my senior Poodle, Peach, outside to potty. Instead of doing her business, she stood blinking at me, shivering a bit in the cold despite her little sweater. I kept the sliding door open in case she changed her mind, and sat down to eat lunch. Peach squatted next to my chair and […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Tricks are perfect for puppies. They’ll help your puppy learn to pay attention to words, and to you; they’ll demonstrate the joys of cracking a joke and making people laugh; they can reinforce training; make for a better partnership; instill confidence in a new puppy; and give you, the human partner, a chance to show […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes Clicker training techniques allow us to communicate with our animals using positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement (which you may sometimes see abbreviated as +R) is one of the quadrants of learning. It involves adding something desirable to the interaction to increase the likelihood that an animal will repeat a behavior. To enhance its benefits, positive reinforcement […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes When cats spray urine in the home, humans consider it a problem behavior, but for cats, spraying is a normal means of communication. Domestic and wild cats use spraying to mark their territory. “It’s found throughout the feline kingdom,” says Mikel Delgado, Ph.D., of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s a way to […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes When your dog does something you want her to repeat, you offer a reward. You may think of a reward as a tasty treat, a cheerful “Good dog,” or a pat on the head. These are all rewards that work for most dogs, helping to show them you’re happy about what they just did. But […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes As a certified yoga instructor as well as a veterinary behavior technician, I have found many similarities between yoga in humans and relaxation cues in our pets. In humans, yoga has been shown to decrease stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure and heart rate, and regulate the fight or flight response. Animals do not have […]