Behind the Behavior

The dangers of heatstroke for those that can’t sweat.

Louisa Beal, DVM

If you have ever seen a dog or cat with heat stroke, you won’t forget it.  But what if you have never seen it?  What do you look for?  The signs of heatstroke are listed below, however, in an emergency, lists tend to slip away from our memory.  Is it red gums or gray gums?  Lots of salivation or dry mouth?  Thumping heart or thready pulse?

Whatever time you take to go thumbing through a first aid book or googling ‘heat stroke’ means another minute that you pet’s brain and other vital organs are being cooked.

Just remember this:

Don’t panic. (more…)

Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

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. (more…)

Louisa Beal, DVM

I like to consider myself a fairly non-judgmental person.  People may do things to their pets that I think are horrible, but I cannot judge them, since, in the past, I have done most of those things myself.  We all grow and learn and change.

However, there are two things that get under my skin and make me want to slap folks upside the head.  Or at least sting them with my sarcasm.  All of my caring, nurturing and willingness to help simply fly out the window.  I end up jamming my fist down my throat so that I don’t say anything that I will regret.

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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…)

Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

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.

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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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Molly Grim, B.A.

We’ve all felt it: The late-afternoon energy crash between lunch and a second cup of coffee, or the on-edge irritability that preceeds that hours-overdue dinner.  As humans, we know that food is a vital tool in stabilizing our mood and energy levels, and for maintaining overall health.  Providing all the necessary brain and body fuel for ourselves and our families helps ensure more relaxed, cooperative relationships between comfortably satiated individuals. If we don’t function optimally on imbalanced nutrition, could what’s in Fido and Fi-fi’s bowl be contributing to their bothersome behavior? This is a multi-faceted question that is being increasingly investigated by veterinarians, pet trainers and animal behaviorists alike.

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Jim Ha, PhD, CAAB

Cats, like all mammals, are social creatures.  While cats are far less social than dogs, to think of cats as asocial is wrong.  The degree of social behavior and the ability of an individual to adapt to a changing social environment varies with species (certainly cats are less social than dogs), breed (Bengal cats are less social than domestic short-hairs), and individual personality.  Even individual personality is dependent on factors like genetics (or what we often call temperament) and learning or socialization.  So genetics play a big role, at the species, breed, and then individual level.

A recent study looked at how young cats reacted to familiar and unfamiliar people and to a novel object, and showed that the social personality of the father (genetics) as well as the degree of early socialization (learning) influenced the later degree of social stress in human interactions, but only the genetics influenced the (nonsocial) response to a novel object.  This is a nice example of the interaction between genetics and learning.  And of course, this is true of all mammals.

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Miles Bensky, BA, CTC

When I read the September edition of the Animal Behavior Associates newsletter, I found a statistic that was quite alarming. It was estimated that 36% of the 81 million cats in the United States did not see a vet in 2006. Why are so many cats not receiving regular healthcare? Regular checkups are key to preventing future health conditions and potential causes for behavioral problems. It is likely because many people find trips to the vet to be a nightmare. The whole occasion is simply too stressful for their cat and for themselves. Therefore, I thought I would outline some basic tips about making a trip to the vet less traumatic on your feline friend.

For your cat, a trip to the veterinarian involves dealing with one stressful situation after another. They are put in a carrier, loaded into a car, and driven away from their familiar surroundings. They then arrive to an unfamiliar building full of the smells, sounds, and sights of other animals… and all of this just to be handled and examined by strangers. All these unfamiliar factors cause some level of anxiety in your cat, and that (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…)