2018 Podcasts
Let’s Opinionate – The Podcast for March 14th, 2018 with Veronica Boutelle Stimulating some new thoughts and giving our neurons some new tasks to promote their survival! Veronica Boutelle, the founder of business consultancy dog*tec, joins PPG co-host Niki Tudge to share opinions on the state of education in our industry. You may not agree with everything they say but it will certainly stimulate some positive and respectful dialogue. Please click here to listen to the podcast on Vimeodog*tec The Podcast for February 21st, 2018 with Sherry Woodard & Teri… Continued
2017 Podcasts
The Podcast for December 20th with Lara Joseph Owner of The Animal Behavior Center, Lara Joseph, joins us to chat about her upcoming workshops at the PPG Behavior and Training Workshop at Best Friends: Building a Trusting Foundation and Target Training Parrots for a Successful Future and her presentations: The Evolution of Aviculture and Fine Tuning Our Training Skills with Parrots. Find the Animal Behavior Center LLC on Facebook Please click here to listen to the podcast on YouTube The Podcast for November 5th with Helen Phillips PPGBI Special… Continued
2016 Podcasts
The Pet Professional Guild BARKS Podcasts 2016 Subscribe to the full PPG World Service Show Playlist on YouTube here The Podcast for December 4th with Victoria Stilwell and Janis Bradley Victoria Stilwell was in the house to tell us why she stands firmly against BSL and believes it essential to teach the public to better understand their dog’s body and vocal language, promoting responsible guardianship and educating children, in particular, how to be safe around dogs. We asked Victoria about her involvement in fighting to save dogs that have been… Continued
The Dark Side of Dog Training and Pet Care
By Angelica Steinker Original article, published in BARKS from the Guild, March 2018 pp. 14-21, features more photos of Sarge, Gunner, Blue, Max and Finn. *Caution: This article contains violent descriptions of dog death, abuse and neglect. “Prosecutions under general anti-cruelty statutes are occasionally successful but greatly hampered by the absence of legal standards pertaining specifically to training practices. Provided it’s in the name of training, someone with no formal education or certification can strangle your dog quite literally to death and conceivably get off scot-free.” – Jean Donaldson (2017) Dog training… Continued
How Big Should a Cat’s Litter Box Be?
By Jennifer Mauger I was recently in a home where the resident cat was eliminating outside the litter box on a regular basis. He was a large Maine Coon mix weighing over 20 pounds. When I went to look at the litter boxes, they were well maintained, clean, and in quiet areas of the home. There were more than enough boxes for both of the cats too. The first thing I actually noticed was the size of the litter boxes. They were average size commercial litter boxes. When I asked… Continued
“Did You Know Your Dog Barks All Day?”
By Julie Naismith “Did you know that your dog barks all day?” my neighbour asked me one day. The simple answer was: no, I didn’t. It was this conversation that led me on the path to discovering my dog-ownership bombshell: that my dog Percy had separation anxiety. I can vividly recall how I felt that day my neighbour first said this to me. I had no idea Percy barked constantly when I was out. How could I have known? I’d had my other dog for a year with no complaints.… Continued
Scents Can Help Dogs Relax
A small study published in May looked at the effects of four scents on dogs in a shelter kennel. The focus was whether the aromatherapy would help the dogs relax. Though it’s a small study and, oddly the only one of its kind, it points to some additional ways that trainers and canine behavior consultants may be able to help clients with anxious dogs. (Odd because of how much we know about how important scent is to dogs; isn’t aromatherapy an obvious avenue for exploration?) The shelter environment is generally… Continued
YOUR Dog, No Comparison
This is a subject I’ve always meant to write about and somehow it always slips my mind until the topic crops ups with another client of mine – that of comparisons. What I mean is those comparisons we make between our own dogs and other peoples’ and maybe our other dogs or previous dogs. It’s human nature of course and a lot of the time it cannot be helped, but to constantly compare, does us and our dogs a disservice. That one ‘great dog’ All dogs are great! Sometimes though there is… Continued
The Unintended Consequences of Shock
(Confidentiality Notice: Names in this blog have been changed to protect privacy, but the facts remain unchanged. Photographs have been used with written consent.) Betsy is a kind person who contacted a shelter in June of 2016 to help find a nice family dog to share her life with through adoption. She learned of Zelda, a female one year old mixed breed. Zelda’s online biography suggested she was “fine” with other dogs and was “friendly” with people, but jumped on them “to say hello.” Little was known about Zelda except… Continued
Scheduling Your Rewards
So…there we are teaching our dogs lots of new things and he’s responding beautifully – treat, treat, treat (yummy!) At what point though, do we stop dishing out all these lovely delicacies? This is a question I’m asked multiple times per week. It’s true that if we continued to treat our dogs at the same rate, at some point we’d end up with enormously fat canines – not great! So, we have to think about something called schedules of reinforcement Determining what scheduled to use When our dogs are learning… Continued
Clicker Training for Cats (6/6)
By Paula Garber and Francine Miller Inter-Cat Aggression Living with cats who do not get along is stressful for everyone. Sometimes the cats need to be completely separated and then formally re-introduced. In many cases, the best outcome we can hope for is for the cats to coexist peacefully to a point where they tolerate each other, even if they do not actively “like” each other. To facilitate peaceful coexistence, the environment must be arranged so that the cats can easily avoid each other and do not have to compete… Continued
You know you own a separation anxiety dog when…
By Julie Naismith Life with a separation anxiety dog differs from the ideal of dog ownership many of us have. “Lassie Come Home” it isn’t. Here are 5 ways this debilitating condition will affect your life as a dog owner, plus a few tips on how to handle the changes without losing your sanity. #1 You learn to plan way ahead for everything Once you’ve worked out your dog has separation anxiety and is in a panic whenever you go out, it gets tough to leave him. When you know the… Continued
Onset of Noise Sensitivity Might Indicate Pain in Dogs
Older dogs who develop noise sensitivity might be in pain. Other behavior changes, like a normally friendly dog showing aggression to children or dogs, have long been regarded as potential indicators of pain. But a study published in February might be the first to make the connection between the onset of noise sensitivity and pain. The researchers looked at two groups of dogs. The group they termed “clinical” had developed noise sensitivity and had diagnosed painful musculoskeletal problems. A “control” group had noise sensitivity but no known painful conditions. One… Continued
Mama Dogs Don’t Use Treats…..
By Yvette Van Veen Many people seem enamoured with the idea that we should emulate what dogs do in the wild. “Mama dogs don’t give treats in the wild,” is one of the more common expressions. This one carries quite a punch. People have a natural affinity for natural. Expressions, analogies, metaphors and idioms can serve various purposes. They can help explain, illustrate and educate. At their best, they simplify a complex topic. They are also used to influence and to persuade. The “mama dog” line usually falls into the… Continued
What’s a Functional Assessment in Dog Training? (And Why You Should Care)
A lot of dog training advice you get on the Internet won’t help. Pretty strange comment coming from a dog blogger who frequently writes about training, right? But even if people recommend a humane, positive reinforcement-based approach, something is missing that can’t be done in a typical online discussion. That’s the functional assessment. A functional assessment, or functional behavioral assessment, is a method from the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA). It consists of identifying the functions of a problem behavior through observation and analysis, then making a plan to… Continued
Retractable Leashes Are Risky
Judging by the number of people I see walking dogs with retractable leash devices on their dogs it appears the product is popular. They are also unsafe. As Dr. Karen Becker describes them “A retractable leash is not so much a leash as it is a length of thin cord wound around a spring-loaded device housed inside a plastic handle” in her article “10 Reasons Not to Use a Retractable Leash.” The length of the retractable cord varies from 15-30 feet, and may be locked in place. Pet stewards have… Continued
The Pet Professional Guild Position Statement on the Use of Shock in Animal Training
It is Pet Professional Guild’s (PPG) view that electric shock in the guise of training constitutes a form of abuse towards pets, and, given that there are highly effective, positive training alternatives, should no longer be a part of the current pet industry culture of accepted practices, tools or philosophies. In this position statement, PPG will combine decades of research with the opinions of certified animal behaviorists, and highlight the question of ethics to explain why using electric shock in the name of training and care is both ineffective and… Continued
Encouraging Play and Activity with Newly Blind Dogs
By Debbie Bauer When a dog loses his or her sense of sight, their whole world changes. There are many things that dogs can do without their sight, but dogs that started out sighted and are now blind are often confused and maybe even fearful when they can no longer see. They can’t interact with their world the way they used to. Most likely, they knew landmarks around the house and yard by sight, they knew family members by their mannerisms and how they moved, they could see the steps were… Continued
Clicker Training for Cats (5/6)
By Paula Garber and Francine Miller Introducing Cats to Each Other In a nutshell, cats should be gradually introduced to each other one sense at a time: first by scent, then by sight, and then physically. Throughout the process, positive associations are built up with the scent, sight, and physical presence of the other cat using food, play, brushing, low-key play—anything the cats enjoy. When introducing cats, you can use clicker training to help boost positive associations between them and keep them focused on you instead of each other. During… Continued
The Neurological Benefits of Counter Conditioning Leash Reactive Dogs
Creating new and better associations for dogs on leash when exposed to fearful/stressful stimuli is crucial, as it is better for all involved for the dog to be less stressed and less fearful. The goal is potentially a positive association is created, or at least less stress. When this can be achieved via counter conditioning and desensitizing dogs to these intrinsic stimuli, and many times they can be, then life is better for the humans and the dogs that have stress when on leash. This is something that, among dog… Continued
A Plug for Play
By Julie Naismith Just like humans, dogs need play time too. And one of the many beautiful things having dogs has taught me is that you’re never too old to play. You might be asking: “But, where does play fit into separation anxiety training?” I am all about fixing separation anxiety dogs, I am also passionate about encouraging them to play too. Working with an anxious dog is about more than tackling the causes of anxiety. The richer a dog’s life, the more productive anxiety training becomes. Enrichment doesn’t fix separation… Continued
Talking to Dogs
A newly published study finds that dogs pay attention to both the way we talk to them and to what we say. Alex Benjamin and Katie Slocombe’s ‘Who’s a good boy?!’ Dogs prefer naturalistic dog‑directed speech looked at what they term “dog-directed speech,” or DDS, which is similar in tone and affect to baby talk. Their canine test subjects were all adult dog guests of a boarding kennel whose humans gave permission for their participation. An earlier study had played recorded human voices using baby talk and regular speech. The content of the speech… Continued
Added Brainpower!
Quite a ‘buzzword’ bandied around at the moment is ‘enrichment’, so here I’m going to take a look at what it actually means and involves. Enrichment? So lets start right there – what is enrichment? Put simply, enrichment is an all encompassing term referring to the addition of something which enhances the quality of something else. If we put this in the context of our dog’s world, we can talk about 2 main forms; social enrichment and mental enrichment. Social Enrichment refers to enhancements we might make to our dog’s environment. … Continued
Does a Deaf (and Blind) Dog Need a Hearing Dog Buddy?
By Debbie Bauer Many people think that a deaf (or blind/deaf) dog needs to have a hearing dog to follow around. This is usually not necessary. Although, if you do have a hearing dog, your deaf dog will watch him closely for cues to things that are important to him – mealtimes, going for a walk, etc. A deaf dog (or even a blind/deaf dog) will notice when the other dogs around him are getting excited, heading towards the door for a walk, or the kitchen for a treat. In fact, sometimes it… Continued
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