New Content
The Art, Science and Ethics of Using Decoy Dogs
By Yvette Van Veen
Learning to work with a reactive, anxious or fearful dog is a challenging process. Dog owners especially struggle. They must learn new skills and execute them correctly, while working with a difficult, if not dangerous, dog. In such situations, owners are often robbed of ...
Itchy Dog or Stressed Dog?
By Dr. Naomi D. Harvey
The relationship between stress, behavior and animal health is complex and varied. Chronic, long-term stress interacts in various ways with personality type, behavior ...
BARKS Podcast with Leslie McDevitt of Control Unleashed®: February 5, 2021
Join Niki Tudge as she Chats and Chuckles with Leslie McDevitt about the upcoming educational event Reactive to Relaxed: Next Steps in Control Unleashed.
Reactive to Relaxed: Next Steps in ...
Latest Articles
Electronic Pet Fences: What You Need to Know
Electronic fences, e-fences, radio fences, Invisible Fences™, pet containment fences: they all amount to the same thing. A system where your dog wears a radio controlled electronic collar that shocks him whenever he crosses a certain perimeter, sometimes marked (at least at first) with ...
Life Is a Numbers Game
On August 13, 2013, I forced myself to say goodbye to my senior Jack Russell rescue Minnie Winnie. She had developed intestinal lymphoma that my vet had diagnosed the previous September. I was thankful to have an anonymous sponsor pay for the surgery that re-sectioned her colon and removed her ...
Drill-Sergeants Not Needed
I’ll never forget the first (and only) time I ended up in a law suit. It was many years ago and I was young and terrified. I had given my landlord a 28 day notice to vacate my apartment, but a 30 day notice was the law. In his complaint, the landlord additionally sited me for tossing out a ...
Get the Best From Your Pet
I read a great quote the other day from a book titled Bringing Out the Best in People by Aubrey Daniels. Here he is talking about positive and negative reinforcement: "It is important to know the difference, because the characteristics of performance generated by each are very different. ...
Positive Reinforcement Training and a “Strong” Dog
You have a “strong” dog so you must need to use lots of force to control them, right? Wrong.
Using positive reinforcement is not only based on science, it is also a fast, effective and fun way of teaching your dog new behaviors. It establishes a pattern of learning and trust allowing you to ...
The Importance of Mental as well as Physical Stimulation
People, no matter how much they love their dog, sometimes don't consider how desperately bored and unfulfilled some dogs get if they have little exercise or outlet for his/her breed instincts.
People in particular who have not lived with dogs before simply may not realise. It's not that ...
Choke Is No Joke
Recently there was a great blog posted to the Pet Professional Guild called Why Prong Is Wrong. I am a big fan of the author, Diane Garrod. Diane is an awesome positive dog trainer, behavior consultant and one of the most passionate people I know about getting truthful information out to dog ...
Why Prong Is Wrong – Physically and Psychologically
A man's best friend deserves better
Prong collars are used to decrease behavior and involve waiting for the dog to do something wrong, like pulling, and then jerking the dog. Used "correctly" they ride high up on the neck. Starting with a play on words, replace the P in Prong with a W and, ...
Which Puppy Would You Pick?
By Bob McMillan
Whether you’re making the selection yourself or your breeder picks a puppy for you, what can you tell looking at an eight-week-old puppy? Other than it’s heartbreakingly cute and you wonder how many you can make it out the door with before anyone notices?
Luckily, there’s a ...