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Keep Eye on Dog. Is One Most Important Thing I Tell You.

Greta Kaplan, CPDT-KA, CDBC

In high school, I played on the varsity squash team.  Squash is not widely played in the United States, so many readers won’t be familiar with it.  It bears some resemblance to handball, though it is several centuries older, and the court has foul zones, so accuracy is required.  Players on the indoor court use racquets the same length as tennis racquets, but with smaller heads.  The ball is small, well under two inches in diameter, and one must have good hand-eye coordination to hit the ball reliably and well.

In the last half-century, a single Pakistani family has supplied numerous top players to the sport.  Hashim Khan, the the most influential of the multitudinous talented Khans, wrote a small booklet about playing squash.  The following advice therefrom is burned into my brain:

“Keep eye on ball.  Is one most important thing I tell you.”

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Dogs Biting Children

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT-KADogs attacking children

This is Dog Bite Prevention week so I thought this would be a good time to discuss the latest research and resources for understanding why dogs bite and preventing dog bites. If we can prevent dog bites to children, we ought to be able to prevent dog bites to adults, or we can hope.

According to the CDC, children are the most at risk for a dog bite and the most likely to require medical attention for the bite. That’s a way of saying that when children get bitten by a dog there is often serious damage, sometimes permanent damage. One might think that most children are bitten by strange dogs but the statistics tell a different story. Children are most likely to be bitten by the family dog. What’s going on here?

A study was published that looked at this very problem. Here’s a quote from the abstract: [Read more...]

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Don’t Touch Me There!

Louisa Beal, DVM

Mario, a West Highland White Terrier had snapped at a two year old girl.  If Mario couldn’t be trusted around children, his owners would have to get rid of him.

The knee jerk response to this would be to try to modify the behavior of the dog.  Mario’s behavior is definitely unacceptable.  A traditional trainer might punish Mario if he growled or snapped at the girl.  A trainer versed in learning theory might pair the presence of the child with things that Mario loves.  Each of these methods might make a small difference in the short run.  Neither of these methods addresses the underlying cause of Mario’s aggression.  Mario had an ear infection that not only made him grumpy, but hurt intensely when his ear was grabbed.  Even the slightest possibility that his ear might be grabbed sent Mario into his defense mode.   That slight possibility included a toddler coming happily toward him. [Read more...]

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What Do I Do Now? Conflict Behavior in Cats and Dogs

Jim Ha, PhD, CAABfriends

Some time ago, I wrote an article titled Pass It On, Redirected Aggression in Cats and Dogs.  In that article, I wrote: “Redirection of a behavior is one of three forms of conflict behavior seen in animals, and humans.  The other two forms of conflict behavior are “approach-withdraw” and “displacement behavior,” which I’ll discuss in future blog entries.”  But I never did… so let’s talk about the other two now.

The example that I gave in that earlier blog was: “(conflict) behaviors are methods for resolving internal conflicts: a hungry dog, faced with a bowl of food and an aggressive canine owner of the food might express any of these three ways of resolving a conflict between approaching for food and fleeing the aggressive owner of the food.”  Another example might be a dog which has been severely frightened.  One of the ways of resolving this internal conflict in drives and motivation, in fact physiological and neurological demands, is familiar to most of us: approach-withdraw, or “flight or fight” as it is commonly, but incorrectly, called.  The other, like redirected behavior, is less well known, the least well known and often the most confusing option: displacement behavior. [Read more...]

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What Is a Reactive Rover?

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDTReactive Rover

One of the most common calls we get at Companion Animal Solutions is from an owner whose dog barks, growls, and lunges at other dogs when on leash. Often, the owner is baffled because their dog loves playing with other dogs at the dog park or dog daycare. There are several reasons why dogs act so differently on leash than they do off leash. I thought it might be helpful to explore some of the more common reasons.

Dogs are highly social animals and when a dog sees another dog, they’re biologically programmed to head on over and investigate with a quick butt sniff. If a dog is on leash, their intense biological drive to investigate the other dog is being thwarted. This reaction is called barrier frustration. Even the most dog friendly dogs in the world are prone to barrier frustration around other dogs. In fact, the most difficult dogs to stay calm around for many dogs are other friendly dogs. [Read more...]

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Why Dogs Bite

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDTLove between man and a dog

Not to put too fine a point on it, but dogs bite because they’re dogs. It’s what dogs are biologically programmed to do. Every dog has the potential to bite, no matter how well socialized or friendly. I thought it might be useful to explore the different reasons why a dog might bite.

Fear Aggression: Humans never cease to amaze me in how they approach unfamiliar dogs. In my work with the clients of fear aggressive dogs, one of the topics we have to discuss is how to keep strangers from approaching their socially fearful dog. Most people assume that a dog wants to meet them. Nothing could be further from the truth with some dogs. If a dog wants to meet you, believe me, that dog will approach you. [Read more...]

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Why We’re Against Breed Specific Legislation (Breed Bans)

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDTLittle Girls and Pitbulls

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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When Behavior Modification Isn’t the Answer

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Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC

When we talk to clients about what we’ll do at our initial consultation, we explain that we’ll take some history about the situation, discuss management that needs to be put in place to ease tensions and help the training work better, and then talk about and actually start training your dog to exhibit more desirable behavior.  I imagine that clients are often eager to get to the training part, thinking that that’s the “meat” of what we do.

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Confrontational Behavior Modification Techniques and the Risk to Owners

James Ha, PhD, CAABConfrontational Dog Training Techniques

I have expressed my concern about confrontational behavior modification techniques in earlier blogs: the use of “positive punishment” or dominance and pack theory-based techniques, especially in the hands of untrained users, has been shown to be ineffective and to produce negative side effects.  Hiby and colleagues demonstrated that positive reinforcement techniques produced a significantly better response to obedience tasks than did positive punishment techniques (see references below).  Blackwell and colleagues showed that dogs trained using positive reinforcement methods were less likely to exhibit later behavior problems while dogs trained using punishment were more likely to exhibit later fear-related behaviors (see references below).  These are just some examples: there is an expanding literature on the significantly greater effectiveness of positive reinforcement techniques as well as the lack of effectiveness of aversive or confrontational methods, methods which are related to incorrect ideas about the role of dominance and pack theory in dogs. [Read more...]

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Dog/Dog Aggression, or Is It?

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT

One of the most common calls we get from prospective clients starts with something like, “My dog is aggressive with other dogs, can it be fixed?” I’ve learned over the years that dog/dog aggression is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. The situation is further complicated because there are different types of dog/dog aggression.

Normal Dog PlayDogs playing
Sometimes, what an owner describes as dog/dog aggression is actually normal dog play. The way dogs play can seem scary to some human beings. These owners are overly conscientious about their dog’s behavior and his/her interaction with other dogs. While being conscientious about your dog’s behavior is a very good thing, like any good trait, it can be taken to an extreme. I sometimes wish I could wave a magic target stick that would make some overly conscientious owners worry less by transferring some of their worry and concern to owners who do not have enough of it. There’s a hilarious blog called Three Woofs and a Woo published by a photographer. She has wonderful shots of dogs playing.

Playground Bully
Some dogs never learned the manners of polite dog play society. They are like some people, just kind of clueless about how their behavior affects others. Jean Donaldson calls these dogs “Tarzans”. The most [Read more...]

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