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Latest Behavior Articles
The Impact of Canine DNA Testing: Mapping the Future
In May 2016, Embark launched its comprehensive pet genetic test in partnership with the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine.
According to Embark’s website, the test will track “over 200,000 genetic markers, offering ancestry analysis as well as an extensive ...
Feline Fastidious Foodies
By Patience Fisher
From cat food commercials to cartoons and internet cats, it is something of a running joke that cats are picky eaters. But is this common assumption correct?
According to C.A. Tony Buffington, a leading researcher in the field of feline ...
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Thinking Outside the Shelter
By Melissa Taylor
Like many shelters, my shelter, Friends For Life Animal Shelter in Houston, Texas, relies heavily on volunteers to meet the needs of program animals. In 2019, our volunteers donated 21,046 hours – enough to replace 10 ...
Welcoming a New Puppy – Ensuring a Happy and Successful Future Together
Welcoming a new pup into your household should be a time of absolute pure joy - he or she is a new family member after all, but sometimes it just turns into something akin to pure chaos, which is a shame.
In many cases, the reason for this ...
Why Counterconditioning “Doesn’t Work”
By Angelica Steinker
A common criticism of counterconditioning is that it does not work. While there can be many reasons why a behavior modification protocol based on counterconditioning fails, it is, in fact, almost always user error. Here ...
Examining Bird vs. Human Expectations
By Sheila S. Blanchette
Anthropomorphism is quite a mouthful of a word, defined by Lexico (2021) as “the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.” Anthropomorphism is commonly seen in our day-to-day lives ...
First Impressions
By Yvette Van Veen
Fourteen years ago, a series of serendipitous events led me toward a career working with feral and roaming dogs. At that time, free-roaming dogs were not a common discussion topic and the prevailing notion was that these ...
Slipping and Sliding
By Diane Garrod
It is no fun for a dog who is scared of walking on shiny floors. Slipping and sliding and being worried or afraid every step of the way can diminish confidence. Yet one can find countless videos on YouTube of people amused at ...
Defying the Stereotype
By Dee Goings
When people think of a Rottweiler, they often think, unfortunately, of a large hulking mass on a choke chain or shock collar. My girl, Ripley, could not be more different.
She came to me from a family who had purchased her ...
Tracking Equines
By Vicki Conroy
A while ago I hosted a tracking workshop for dogs at my hobby farm in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, hosted by Margaret Keast of Jigsaw Dog Training and Behaviour Consultancy, who is based in Newcastle, ...