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CAUTIONWALKER Safety Leash

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT-KA

I chose to devote my career to working with anxious, fearful and aggressive dogs. If you read the articles I post here and in our newsletter that include Why Dogs Bite, What Is a Reactive Rover, Dogs Biting Children, well, you get the idea. I know many wonderful trainers who also work with fearful dogs and when we get together, we bemoan how clueless people can be when approaching a dog they don’t know. We spend an unbelievable amount of time coaching owners of fearful dogs on how to protect their dogs on walks. Some of our suggestions have included body blocking, using the crossing guard ‘STOP’ hand signal, crossing the street and telling strangers that their dog has a contagious skin disease (thanks Nicole Wilde). So when I saw a post on Facebook about a new product called the CAUTIONWALKER Safety Leash, I was on that web site in a matter of seconds to check it out. When I emailed the CAUTIONWALKER Safety Leash company, Matt Cunningham replied back to me and he sent me one so that I could try it for myself.

The first thing that impressed me about this leash is the quality:

  • It’s made of really thick nylon. Their web site says “Same sturdy construction as truck cargo straps” and they are not exaggerating.
  • The stitching is well done.
  • It has a sturdy handle and swivel clip that attaches to the dog’s collar.
  • The CAUTION tape look is completely authentic. It’s large enough and bright enough to be seen at a distance.

The price is very reasonable at $17.99 with free shipping and they offer “Bulk discount for vets, pet stores and dog-training professionals”. Their web site is clear, easy to read and addresses the issue of child safety. Do you really want strangers approaching your kids if they’re walking the dog?

My only minor criticism of this new product is that the leash is just over two feet long. I understand why they made the decision to keep the leash short. My owners are so nervous that they’re clutching the leash and reigning the dog in as close to them as possible but that’s part of what we try to get them over: “relax”, “nice loose J in the leash please”. That being said though, there’s no reason you couldn’t buy a splitter or extender if you really want the additional length.

I was a Senior Quality Assurance Manager before changing careers to dog training and animal behavior which means it takes a lot to impress me with any new product and the CAUTIONWALKER Safety Leash impresses me. I LOVE this new product and can’t wait to start using them with our clients.

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Animal Behavior Lectures available on DVD

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT-KA

We offered a workshop Animal Behavior for Veterinary Professionals in Seattle. We invited veterinarians and vet tech to attend lectures by Dr. Louisa Beal, DVM, Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB and yours truly. We had a great time meeting our veterinary colleagues, learning about the issues they deal with in their practices and answering questions.

But wait, it gets better! We were fortunate to have the Tawzer Dog people at our workshop to film our presentations. Everyone at Tawzer Dog was an amazing professional and made the experience a genuine pleasure for all of us. Now our lectures are available for purchase or rental at TawzerDog.com. They have recently launched a service modeled after NetFlix where for a small, monthly fee, you can rent DVDs by Veterinarians, Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists and Certified Professional Dog Trainers. Tawzer put trailers together for us on YouTube:

Behavioral Genetics of Dogs and Cats by Jim Ha, Medication for Animal Behavior Problems by Louisa Beal, Confrontational Behavior Modification Techniques by Jim Ha and Recommended Behavior Modification Protocols and Outcomes by Christine Hibbard.

If you like what you see and you’d like to rent or purchase any of these lectures, visit TawzerDog:

 

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Associate Professor in Animal Behavior reviews Nintendogs

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT-KA

If you follow our blog, you know we’re a bunch of science geeks. Oh sure, we write in depth about dog training and animal behavior but what you might not know unless you spend a bit of time with us is that we never miss an opportunity to make dog training and animal behavior interesting and fun! This is never more true than with our mentor, Associate Research Professor, Dr. Jim Ha. He is a professor at the University of Washington and Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist. He’s always working on something fascinating and important. He even manages to make genetics and statistics fun. How many people can you say that about?!

I’ll admit that I know less than nothing about online gaming or video games but I was excited to read Jim’s interview with Steve Watts over at 1up.com about Nintendogs. Steve talks to Jim about how realistic Nintendo’s dog simulator is in giving gamers the experience of raising their own puppy. OK gamers, educate us about this whole thing. Do any of you play on one of these video game consoles? What do you think about Nintendogs?

 

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Qualified Animal Behavior Professionals

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDT-KA

A companion animal with a behavior problem is a serious issue for most owners.  You need to find help and you want to find qualified help.  Our first recommendation is to consult with your veterinarian.  Your vet should always be the first person with whom you discuss a behavior issue.  All too often, the behavior problem is part of a larger set of health issues.  The four areas of possible concern we recommend you discuss with your veterinarian are: pain, irritation/infection, endocrine and sensory. An example that we see often is aggression in dogs caused by arthritis or other source of pain.  So take any behavior problem to your veterinarian first.

If your vet recommends that you see a behavior specialist and does not make a recommendation, you should look for professional certifications.  In the United States, there are no federal or state regulations about who can call themselves animal behaviorists or dog trainers. There are many people out there that “practice” animal behavior and even a number of organizations that provide online training to become an animal behaviorist, but we recommend only the following professional certifications for the field that we now call applied animal behavior: [Read more...]

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Behavioral Ecology & Evolution of Dogs

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDTCoppingerBookDogs

A few weeks ago, I attended a day long lecture by Ray Coppinger, PhD and co-author of Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution. This book was published in 2002 and I read it several years ago. I remembered how much I enjoyed the book and how much I learned by reading it so when I had the opportunity to attend a Coppinger lecture, I jumped at the chance. I was not disappointed. It’s been a long time since I attended a lecture or workshop and took notes, let alone ten pages of notes. If you ever get the opportunity to hear Dr. Coppinger speak, I highly recommend it. He brings knowledge, experience and great humor to a topic he’s been studying for many years; dogs around the world.

It would be impossible to boil down a book like Dogs into an eight hour lecture so Dr. Coppinger treated us to his own version of the highlights of the book. First off, he gave us a primer in studying dogs. He organized the study of dogs into three categories: genetics, paleontology and anthropology. This was an excellent refresher and as throughout the entire day, Dr. Coppinger’s personal stories and sense of humor made wading into these topics fun and interesting. [Read more...]

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A Reading List in Animal Behavior, Part Two

Jim Ha, PhD, CAABAnimal Behavior Reading List Part2

Back in the fall of 2008, I presented a blog titled A Reading List in Animal Behavior, Part One. I went on in that article to say, “So here I present a highly personal reading list in ethology.  In this entry, I suggest some reading in basic ethology, and in a later entry, I will focus in readings in applied animal behavior.”

But it never happened.. no follow-up blog on the most relevant material, applied ethology!  So, forthwith, the rest of my list… the disclaimer, as before: this is a personal list.  These are the sort of readings, applied in this case, that I would, and have, “required of students of this field, beginning at the undergraduate level and right on through graduate or board-certification work in ethology.  These are the books that my students, graduate and undergraduate, read.  And these would provide the foundation for an excellent library in animal behavior.” Note: We’ve made book and DVD recommendations about dog behavior, cat behavior, and parrot behavior on the Companion Animal Solutions web site under the Books & DVDs section. For the books below, we’ve linked the titles of these books to places you can order them.

[Read more...]

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Parrot Behavior and Training Resources

Christine Hibbard, CTC, CPDTTwo Parrots On Perch

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. [Read more...]

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Why We Love Three Woofs And A Woo!

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBCThree Woofs And A Woo

First, we love TWAAW because it is very funny.  Food Lady is just a funny writer and her great photos really give her lots of opportunities for humor.

Second, we love TWAAW because there are lots of great photos of dogs being dogs.  Food Lady does not hide the fact that Piper is, well, a bitch.  We love Mad Teeth ™.  We love the bizarre lip configurations when dogs shake off.  We love the photos of the Woofs interacting with strange dogs, too.

Third, we love TWAAW for a reason that is a little harder to describe.  There are lots of great dog photos (though fantastic quality photos of dogs out just doing their doggie thing are rarer), and there are lots of great writers who tell us truthful things about dogs, and there are lots of people who are very funny about their dogs… but almost no one is all three. [Read more...]

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A Reading List in Animal Behavior, Part One

Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

Graduation cap and booksI am frequently asked about readings in animal behavior.  One of the nice things about practicing in a region like Seattle is that our audience is so well educated.  So not infrequently I have clients who want to learn more, want to read more about animal behavior.  Most often, they want to read more about what we call Applied Animal Behavior.  Applied animal behavior is the relatively new field which deals with the behavior (and misbehavior) of our companion animals based on a scientific approach that extends from the modern academic field of animal behavior, or ethology.  Ethology was historically based in Europe, and is a field of biology and psychology, that is, it is a sub-discipline of evolutionary biology.  The basic precepts of ethology are that behavior has a genetic, and thus evolutionary, basis, overlaid with environmental influences (learning and experience), that we can best learn about the behavior of animals by learning about the behavior of close and distant relatives in natural environments which allow the expression of species- (or in the case of dogs, breed)-typical behaviors.  It is an approach that traces its roots, like all the rest of modern biology, back to Darwin in the mid-1800’s, and one that has been revolutionized, again like many topics in biology, by the DNA/genetics revolution.  The mapping of the entire dog genome at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in recent years has begun to confirm the long-standing assumptions of ethology. [Read more...]

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Control Unleashed: Rule Structures for Dogs

Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBCAgility border collie

I have been engaged in an effort to find an acceptable way to explain to my clients how to provide structure and predictability to their dogs in a way that would make their dogs comfortably willing to abide by human rules.  I explained that I’m uncomfortable when such programs invoke the concepts of dominance, “boss”, “alpha”, or even “leadership” — not because those concepts are wrong or unimportant, but because of the meanings and connotations that decades of popular dog writing have attached to these words.  I also commented that I was uncomfortable with many of the steps in so called “leadership” programs because they struck me as being based on false ethology and having no real training value once the supposed ethological meaning was stripped away.  Not much was left!

I attended the “Control Unleashed” seminar in Portland, Oregon presented by Leslie McDevitt, CPDT, CDBC, a very gifted trainer and behavior consultant from the Philadelphia area.  Leslie has worked closely with Karen Overall, one of the leading veterinary behaviorists in the world, and has a strong understanding of brain [Read more...]

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