Behind the Behavior

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

The Association of Pet Dog Trainers has declared January to be National Train Your Dog Month.  Too often, owners relinquish their dogs to shelters because an untrained puppy is no big deal, but an untrained dog begins exhibiting behavior problems if the unwanted behavior is allowed to continue. How many phone calls have I received from owners complaining that their dog is attacking people at the front door or won’t come when called resulting in the dog getting into all kinds of trouble? When I ask these owners if they’ve taught their dogs what to do instead, I often hear a description of punishment for bad behavior instead of a description of how their own dog training efforts failed. (more…)

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

I see many, many new dog behavior cases each year and I love my work, but sometimes, I need to branch out and learn about the behavior of other companion animals. My partner in Animal Behavior at Companion Animal Solutions is Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB. Jim sees all of the cat and parrot cases that we take. I’ve been privileged to learn about animal and bird behavior by riding along with him on his private behavior consultations with our clients. The ride along opportunities that I enjoy the most are the parrot cases. I love cats, don’t get me wrong, but the parrot cases fascinate me. When I first embarked on my parrot behavior and training research, I was disappointed at how difficult it was to find quality information about parrot behavior and training. The internet is rife with dog training information (some of it excellent and some of it awful and downright harmful), but information about parrot behavior is harder to come by. After some time consuming research, I began to compile a list of resources that include the most respected researchers, veterinarians, applied animal behaviorists, and trainers. I wanted to share what I’ve learned with our readers interested in parrot behavior and training. (more…)

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

The city council of Bothell, Washington is considering enacting breed specific legislation that would ban residents from owning certain breeds of dogs. All of us at Companion Animal Solutions believe that Breed Specific Legislation is the wrong approach to making our neighborhoods and ourselves safe from vicious dogs. We believe that well written, well enforced dangerous dog legislation betters serves us all by protecting us from dangerous dogs and irresponsible owners without making criminals or victims out of safe dogs and responsible owners. Andrea Kilkenny recently wrote an article for us titled Fun Activities For You and Your Dog and Andrea has participated in them all… with her bully breed dogs. I’m please to present here the letter that Andrea sent to all members of Bothell’s City Council.

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Guest Blogger: Andrea Kilkenny and the tireless Mojo

I live with Mojo. Mojo will be 9 soon, and shows no sign of slowing down. I have to say, he’s better than when he was oh say, 2, but at almost 9, if it weren’t for his graying face, you would not know he is a senior dog. I love my Mojo, but I also realize that many people would find him extremely frustrating, and I often wonder had I not adopted him, if he would have stayed in one home or been shuffled around from one exasperated owner to the next, or been returned to the shelter. Coupled with his energy level are some other factors that make him a challenging dog: high intelligence and strong determination. Put that in a sporty, lean, muscular high energy package, and you could have a recipe for disaster.

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Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

The writing has been on the wall for years. First came the September 2007 citizens committee report calling shelter conditions in King County “deplorable”. If you’ve followed the KCACC oversight committee education work being done at kcaccexposed.org, you know that the staff that works at Animal Care and Control and at the shelters are doing everything they can within a broken system. Many critics of the way KCACC has been run claim that the $1 million dollar one time allocation to fix the system wasn’t enough because of tragically bad management and failed oversight at KCACC. Now I’m reading the announcement on the Metropolitan King County Council web site dated September 24, 2009 that is titled Council member commends Executive for implementing their call to get King County out of the shelter business. What does this mean exactly? Well, as with all governmental issues, it means several things. (click on the image above to see video of the KOMO Problem Solvers’ story on this issue).

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Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

If you’ve read some of my other posts here, you know I’ve mentioned my Australian Shepherd named Conner. He is quite the remarkable dog; lots of natural herding instinct, loves kids and men, and a born dog/dog communicator who helps me diagnose and treat dog/dog aggression cases. Conner has one problem though, noise phobia. This time of year sends him into fits of barking, stress panting, and pacing. We’re lucky in one way though, his symptoms are mild to moderate. Our clients report that some of their dogs hide (in bathtubs, closets, under the bed), shake and drool. This phobia is difficult to treat because it’s difficult or impossible to control the stimuli: thunder, fireworks, gunshots, cars backfiring, etc. Thunderstorms are even more difficult to deal with because thunderstorms are more than one stimulus: change in barometric pressure, metallic smell, wind, rain. (more…)

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

I adopted two adult, male Aussies named Conner and Flynn from Australian Shepherd Rescue so now I’m a volunteer. A little over a week ago, I got a call from Seattle Animal Care and Control notifying me that a purebred, female Australian Shepherd puppy had been surrendered. Once the puppy’s hold period was up, I went off to evaluate her and bring her into Aussie Rescue.

I’d love to know the back story on this girl since she’s perfect, never been mistreated that I can see, and perfectly healthy (including negative fecal float). She’s up to date on shots and has a microchip. I’ve named her Maebh (pronounced may + v). This name is from an old Irish name Madb, “the cause of great joy” or “she who intoxicates.” I know she’ll probably end up with a name like Oreo, but I thought I should give her a predictive name… it’s a shot. (more…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

I teach puppy classes.  It’s a weird category, and people have different expectations from a class called “puppy class” or “puppy kindergarten.”  If you take my flyball class, you expect to be taught how to do flyball and help teach your dog to do flyball.  If you take a class in competition obedience, you know you’ll be learning, among other things, how to teach your dog to heel, front, finish, sit, stand, down and stay.  What is puppy class for?  Doesn’t your puppy already know how to be a puppy?

Yes – in fact, for many, that’s the problem!  They want help in teaching their puppy to be clean in the house, not bite them with that mouthful of needles, and not play tug with their pants leg.  Also, it would be nice if the pupper didn’t scream when put in his crate.  But at the same time, puppy owners’ last class was often a more traditional obedience class, and perhaps without thinking about it, they expect to do some sits, downs, stays, and heeling. (more…)

Carly Loyer Davis, BA, CPDT

In Part Two of this blog, I talked about some obvious health risks imposed by the proposed City of Seattle breed-specific legislation.  I do, however, see some portions of the law that impress me at first glance.

Under Seattle’s version of BSL, owners must complete a dog training or owner instruction course “that impresses upon owners of fighting breed dogs their responsibilities to properly socialize, supervise, and care for their dog, and which teaches them practical knowledge and tools to help their dog be a good canine citizen.” This is fantastic, and I wish that it were required of all dog owners, not just the ones whose dogs may have an element of a “fighting breed” in the mix. As any behaviorist or dog trainer worth their salt will tell you, and as our consultants at Companion Animal Solutions often explain when working with aggressive dogs, socialization can make a huge difference in the life of a dog.  Severe lack of socialization can produce a dog who appears to have been physically abused. Dogs that don’t learn to handle and enjoy a variety of environments, people, dogs and experiences when they are young will not know how to react to those situations later in life, which can result in dangerous fear aggression. My only beef with this portion of the law is that, while it does say that the Director will “vet and pre-approve” the programs that fulfill this requirement, it does not specifically state the training techniques that will be used in these programs. (more…)

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

I recently went online at Twitter. I know, I know, I’m not much for “social networking” sites, but I like Twitter. I’m finding it to be more business and technology related than Facebook. I’m able to get small, smart chunks of information without all the distracting “features” of other social networking sites. I’ve been posting links to articles and information about dog training and animal behavior. We’ll have a live feed from Twitter on our blog soon, but in the meantime, if you’d like to see the animal behavior and dog training information I’ve been posting, you can follow me (or my Tweets if you will) at: http://twitter.com/chibbard.