Behind the Behavior

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…)

Greta Kaplan, CPDT

Recently, I engaged in a discussion with a poster to a dog training list. The poster is a breeder of an AKC toy breed, and she had two intact, year-old males who were fighting. It sounded like one was resource guarding her and the other, she mentioned, was very shy. In responding, I mentioned that I thought she should neuter one or both, and that if she were to neuter one, it would make sense to neuter the shy guy.

Absolutely not, she responded, shocked. Both boys were offspring of Best-in-Show winners and had fantastic conformation potential.

My response was to offer a lot of information on the inheritability of shyness. We know a *lot* about this exact issue. Experimenters intentionally bred a line of so-called “nervous Pointers” so that they could study (more…)