I was at a dog park the other night with a 45 pound ABD (American Black Dog). It had the typical medium–length, all black coat and built like a border collie. A couple of weeks ago he pulled his owner off her feet while going after his favorite target—’little white dogs’. He gave no warning before he lunged.
Barking is a problem for just about everyone other than New Zealand shepherds. They use “Huntaway” dogs to drive sheep with incessant barking. I don’t blame the sheep. For most people, incessant barking is a problem. People can be driven from their apartments or condos because their dogs bark incessantly. Shelters have trouble featuring adoptable animals because they cannot hear amid barking dogs in a kennel.
I have a cattle dog that belongs to a common subspecies of domestic dog—canis manducatione—the chewing dog. He does have a small underbite, which makes me think part of his problem is improper occlusion. I will be fixing that problem in the near future, but for the moment (and for the last 10 months) I have been dealing with a super chewer. That brings up the topic of chew toys.
Pavlov is a name well known in the field of psychology but almost nothing about his work is known. At best, you may know that his most famous experiment was to ring a bell and then give a dog a piece of food. He traced the physiological reflexes associated with food – salivation, reduction in heart rate, etc.
As if you don’t have enough headaches in keeping a successful salon going, there is a dark cloud hanging over your head. That cloud makes clients’ dogs disappear. That’s because some of your clients’ dogs aren’t growing hair anymore; they aren’t breathing, either.
Behavior Clips
Many of your clients need training services and ask you to help them find a qualified trainer. Trainers that come to your salon may solicit that kind of recommendation. They will undoubtedly sell themselves in the best light possible – an understandable and normal thing to do. This is where it gets interesting.
One day, a hearing impaired friend asked Mike Sapp if he had ever known of a dog being trained to assist a deaf person. At the time, it didn’t seem like a particularly momentous occasion, but it was destined to change Mike’s life. Today, almost 30 years and thousands of service and hearing dogs later, Mike is the COO and founder of “Paws with a Cause” in Wayland, Michigan.
The last 30 years of dog training lore revolves around the connection between wolves and dogs. You can buy 100 books that prattle about dogs being descended from wolves; animals that voluntarily live in groups, called packs. This perspective invariably assumes that dogs are likewise “pack animals”. The underlying implication is that dogs possess the same wolf-like ability to live in harmony with their own kind.
Barking is a problem for just about everyone other than New Zealand shepherds. They use “Huntaway” dogs to drive sheep with incessant barking. For them it is functional. For the rest of us it is problematic. People can be driven from their apartments or condos because their dogs bark incessantly. Shelters have trouble featuring adoptable animals because they cannot hear amid barking dogs. OSHA noise level standards require kennel workers to use hearing protection.
Of all the disconnects between dog owners and their dogs, the biggest, most glaring, completely illogical, widely held and damaging myth is that dogs can be spiteful. Nope. Nada. Nicht. Ain’t happening. To understand my adamant belief that doggie spite doesn’t happen, conduct this simple experiment based on actual events.
PetQuest returns to Wilmington, Ohio this June for the 2015 expo! Again, the expo will be taking place at the dog friendly Roberts Conference Center June 25th-28th 2015, with brand new seminars and certification courses, as well as the three day trade show.