Impulse Control

Dogs rolling on their backs is adorable. Repeated rolling though can be a sign of excessive itchiness that might need veterinary care. Dogs also have a habit of rolling in things their owner's might not care to smell or wash out of their fur.

Also called compulsive behavior disorder, this is a mental health disorder characterized by the excessive performance of repetitive behaviors that don't serve any apparent purpose

Five types of dog-to-dog supervision, from left to right (or from 1 to 4 stars): No adult supervising dogs; Adult present but distracted; Reacting after the dogs are too close; Having a plan, being prepared; Fully present, adult supervision

can save your dog's life.
Thanks to Morgan Macy, training assistant at The Canine Connection in Chico, CA, for demonstrating these techniques.üStart teaching the food bowl wait" with the food bowl held high. Look for your dog to shift her eyes from the bowl to your face.üClick (or use another marker) to indicate she's doing it right

There are many ways to add mental stimulation to a simple game of fetch. For example, we can ask the dog to jump onto a platform and lie down before we throw a disc for him. We can ask him to go through an agility tunnel before catching the ball. The important thing to recognize is when the dog is getting over threshold and stopping the game or reducing its intensity until the dog calms down. If you know the signs of hyperarousal, depicted in the infographic in the original article, then you will be more able to help your dog.

It's true that dogs like Australian Shepherds, a breed commonly referred to as high drive" and thought of as "needing to work

How do I stop my dog from stealing food? How do I get my dog to stop drinking toilet water? Why does my dog run off all the time? These are just a few of the countless things dogs do that make their guardians run to professional trainers for help. The reality of dog behavior modification is that often the solution to a dog's bad habit is not through training the dog, but through carefully managing every opportunity the dog has to practice unwanted behaviors.

Door darting is an impulse-control problem. It's also incredibly self-rewarding. Remedying the issue requires teaching the dog to exhibit self-control around an open door, while employing diligent management to prevent the rehearsal of unwanted behavior. The following tips can help.

When your dog has learned how to search, this makes a great rainy day indoor exercise activity. You can also routinely scatter her meals around the yard so she has to search through the grass to find them; put her on a long line if you don't have a fence. You can also name her favorite toys and have her find them. You can even have family members and friends hide and have her find them.

A couple of decades ago, when positive reinforcement-based training was in its infancy, we were quite sensitive to criticism from the dog training community about this new permissive" style of dog training. When we began encouraging people to play tug with their dogs

The risks for a free-roaming dog are legion, including, but not limited to: getting hit by a car, shot by an irate neighbor or a police officer protecting public safety, attacking or being attacked by other animals, being picked up by animal control, or simply vanishing, never to be seen again. Yet some dogs seem hell-bent on escaping – doing everything they can think of to get over, under, around, or through their humans' containment strategies. What do you do when you have a dog who is dedicated to escaping his yard?

Like many other expert food thieves, Chip is quite careful in his pilfering decisions. He will steal only when we are not in the room or when we are being inattentive. The parsimonious (simplest) explanation of this is a behavioristic one: Chip learned early in life that he was more likely to be successful at taking forbidden tidbits when a human was not in the room, and more likely to be unsuccessful if someone was present and attentive to him. In other words, like many dogs who excel at food thievery, Chip learned what works!