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You Can Still Help the Animals of Ukraine Survive the War
Quick Link: Help Animals Survive the War in Ukraine (Click on link to donate.)
Latest updates on the Help Animals Survive the War in Ukraine fundraiser
A Letter from Dr. Marina Bayeva:
On August 24th, it will be six months (!) since Russia invaded Ukraine. Six months with no end in ...
BARKS Podcast with the PPG Advocacy Panel: Discussion #5 – Meeting People Where They Are to Facilitate Change
Meeting People Where They Are to Facilitate Change
Join the Pet Professional Guild (PPG) Advocacy Panel for a discussion on Meeting People Where They Are to Facilitate Change.
Pet guardians and ...
PPG Advocacy Panel: Making Education More Accessible
By Susan Nilson
The Pet Professional Guild (PPG) Advocacy Panel was launched in August and has already held its first three sessions, where the panel discussed How To Best Advocate for ...
Latest Articles
Higher-Order Conditioning: Did it Happen To My Dog?
The other day I was sitting in my bedroom with Clara and Zani and the doorbell rang. And there was dead silence. This pierced my heart. If you follow the blog, you know that I lost my dear dog Summer suddenly in August. She was wonderful beyond compare. She also barked reactively at ...
Thunderphobia in Dogs
Thunderphobia is the fear of thunderstorms and it can be severe enough to make a dog’s life miserable. It may be more common than you know.
At least 20% of dogs suffer noise phobias including thunderphobia, according to ethologist Dr. Karolina Westlund, Ph.D. There are about 80,000,000 dogs ...
The Science of Force-Free Learning: How Our Pets Learn!
Introduction
Here at the Pet Professional Guild (PPG), we like to focus on building relationships with our pets by using positive reinforcement to train new skills, and to build new behaviors as replacements for problematic ones. Because the emotional brain inhibits the rational brain (and ...
Clicker Training for Cats (4/6)
By Paula Garber and Francine Miller
Clicker Training for Behavioral Problems:
Clawing Furniture/Destructive Furniture Scratching
Destructive furniture scratching is a commonly reported problem in cats, and one of the many unwanted behaviors that clicker training can help. Without going ...
A Change in Routine Can Be a Shock to the System for Dogs too
By Julie Naismith
Dogs and novelty don’t always mix. Although many dogs breeze through change, anxious dogs can be thrown by it. If it could talk, the stressed dog would probably say: “Ok, I was feeling good about everything, but I worry when I don’t know what’s round the ...
Teach Old Dogs New Games
A team of researchers at the Clever Dog Lab (oh, how I'd love to work there ...) at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna suggest teaching older dogs to play brain games on touchscreen computers and tablets.
The articles describing the related study don't go into details on what these ...
Give Me a Break!
A little too often I think we may demand too much of our dogs. It's about expectations. If we push too much, we may ultimately push too far, and this is not good with an animal who soaks up what we give him like a sponge and internalizes everything around him.
Manage Expectations
I ...
Quality of Life for Blind/Deaf Dogs
By Debbie Bauer
I receive a lot of great ideas for new blog posts - Thank you so much for those. I'm always looking for ideas to write about that will be useful to each of you as readers. One idea that truly intrigued me was to discuss what quality of life a blind and deaf dog can have. I ...
Why Every Cat Needs a Place to Hide
By Dr. Lynn Bahr
Has your cat ever gone MIA in your own home? I lost an entire litter of kittens once in a small 1 bedroom apartment. All five furballs disappeared while I was out running errands. Imagine my panic and the frantic search that ensued to find them. Where could they have ...