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Latest Behavior Articles

­­Compulsive Eating in Dogs

­­Compulsive Eating in Dogs

By Maureen Tay   Also known as compulsive eating disorder, compulsive eating is a disorder where a dog tends to eat everything - from food items to non-food items. The specific practice of eating non-food, non-nutritive substances, such as wool or paper, is known as pica. Stool ...
Training a Blind Dog

Training a Blind Dog

By Miki Saito   Unfortunately, even knowledgeable and experienced trainers sometimes hesitate when it comes to working with a blind dog. It is as if they consider the dog’s blindness an obstacle that cannot be overcome. Since blindness cannot be changed, this mindset can lead ...

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Rethinking Dominance in Horses

Rethinking Dominance in Horses

By Dorothy Heffernan In 21st century horse keeping, we require a range of behaviors from our horses. Some of these involve the horse staying near us and not leaving, such as grooming, tacking up, leading, waiting to have a head collar, ...
Cats: In Crisis

Cats: In Crisis

By Dr. Liz Bales America loves cats! In fact, we have more cats than dogs living in our homes. We currently live with more than 94 million cats, compared to 90 million dogs (Daily Dog Stuff, n.d.). Nearly half of all millennials have cats: ...
Project Trade: Revisited

Project Trade: Revisited

In March of 2016, the Pet Professional Guild rolled out Project Trade, an international advocacy program promoting the use of force-free pet equipment by asking pet guardians to swap aversive gear for a discount on services.  The aversive ...
Puppies Being Puppies

Puppies Being Puppies

By Sally Bradbury Preventing food guarding at mealtimes is usually pretty straightforward: simply allow puppy to eat in peace. If you have more than one dog, feed them separately and teach them that the presence of a human near their food ...
A Problem Like ‘Down’!

A Problem Like ‘Down’!

In a training class, I always find that a significant number of dogs (and their guardians, of course) have some trouble when it comes to learning/teaching how to lie down on cue. Why Teach Lie Down Anyway? If we can ask our dogs to lie down ...

Young Dogs Might Be More Similar to Human Teenagers Than We Think: New Research

By Naomi D. Harvey and Lucy Asher Speak to many dog owners and they will tell you that their once perfectly behaved puppy started to become “difficult” at around six to 12 months of age. There are articles all over the internet that ...
Preventing Resource Guarding in Dogs

Preventing Resource Guarding in Dogs

Resource guarding is a dog’s natural tendency to protect valued possessions such as food, toys or resting locations. From a dog’s perspective, the approach of a person or animal is a potential threat to losing the valued possession. The ...
Phoenix Blog Competition: Choices Matter

Phoenix Blog Competition: Choices Matter

By Maria Zarate As a veteran shelter professional, I’ve always sought outside the box to find effective and efficient methods to help residents skill build. Here are three “go to” methods we use regularly in the shelter environment and I ...