Behind the Behavior

James Ha, PhD, CAAB

Here’s a question for all of you dog trainers (and that should be just about everyone who has a dog)… how often should you train a dog? Many of us in this business would, of course, say, “as often as possible… please!” But that is not quite what I mean: from a scientific point-of-view, what is the optimum frequency of dog training… once a day, once a week, once a month? Again, many of us would answer, “as frequently as possible, within the attention span of our dog.” But surprisingly perhaps, there is very little information in the scientific literature about the optimum frequency for training, especially for dogs.

A few trainers like Bailey (1995) and Abrantes (2000) have provided some guidelines, generally “from once (more…)

Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

Behavior has many causes: this is a general statement that many people believe is true, and it often causes people to extend the conclusion to one that suggests that we can never understand behavior, that it will always remain a black-box mystery. But of course, as professional animal behaviorists, academic or clinical, some of us have set ourselves the goal of understanding the causes of, and therefore the modification of, just that behavior that seems so complex.

Of course, as is so often true, the answer that we see depends on the focus that we bring to the question. To a professional animal behaviorist (let’s use the more modern name for one who studies animal behavior: an (more…)

Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

I recently attended a conference of companion animal behavior practitioners and researchers, held in New Orleans this past March (see earlier blog entry). One of the most interesting, and most important, presentations at the three-day meeting was titled, “Assessing Behavior and Training Methods Using Physiological Measures.” This was a summary, and a very interesting demonstration, of the work by Nancy Williams, Peter Borchelt, Alice Moon-Fanelli, and Megan Bulloch that has suggested that heart rate, a relatively easy measurement in awake (ie, behaving!) animals, can provide insight into the activity of the brain.

The logic comes from some similar work in humans, and goes like this: good, healthy behavior is flexible behavior, that is, behavior which exhibits an appropriate selection of responses to stimuli, and that shifts as (more…)

Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

I am sitting in the New Orleans International Airport, waiting for my (much delayed) flight to Atlanta (severe weather!), and on to home in Seattle. The purpose of my travel to the Big Easy, and specifically, to a small hotel with conference facilities in the French Quarter, was to attend something called the Interdisciplinary Forum for Applied Animal Behavior (IFAAB). IFAAB brings together, by invitation only, no more than 30 of the top Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists (CAABs) and Board-certified Veterinary Behaviorists in the country. Each attendee must make a presentation to their colleagues, presentations designed to stir up discussion and even dissension as much (more…)

Dr. Jim Ha, CAAB (Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist)

Most pet owners are familiar with the situation: your dog or cat is upset about something, perhaps has been challenged or even attacked. But rather than an understandable response in which the animal lashes out at the challenger, or turns and runs, it will turn and attack someone, or something, else. That is, it will exhibit an appropriate behavior but toward an inappropriate target.

In my house call cases, I frequently see this behavior in cats: they are frightened by a strange or new cat, and will turn and attack… the owner! This is frequently also the situation in inappropriate urination situations. The cat dislikes something about her litterbox, and urinates… in a different location.

In dogs, redirected behavior frequently manifests itself in social relationships. Dogs, more so than cats, have a social hierarchy, and if confronted by a more dominant animal, dogs will frequently redirect their (more…)

Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

Cats are a mystery to many of their owners, perhaps more so than dogs. Dogs are social, like we primates, and so we can often understand their need for attention, the reward of social contact and praise, and even, at a deeper evolutionary level, perhaps a lot of their signals and communication. But cats – symbols of the unknown, the dark worlds, the places where humans feared to tread – why do cats mystify us so?

One answer is probably their lack of sociality. Modern domestic cats are descended from relatively solitary species of wild cat (all cats but the lion are considered far to the solitary extreme of the sociality continuum). So cats do not respond to social signals or rewards in the same way that we do, or our oh-so-social dogs (more…)