Training

The way to teach your dog to check in" with you frequently is to heavily and frequently reinforce this behavior – first

If you adopt an adult dog, it may be that she arrives in your home with zero experience at living indoors, or a medical problem. Here are tips for potty training an adult dog.

By definition, punishment is something that will decrease the probability of the occurrence of a certain behavior. Generally, this punishment involves something that is sufficiently startling or aversive so as to thwart the “problem” behavior. If the dog has benefitted from the behavior in the past, it will take even more startling or aversive punishment to override his expectation of getting that reward again. Frequently, a punished dog stops attending to you; you become something to be avoided.

You may be embarrassed by your dog’s proclivity to mount other dogs, cushions or pieces of furniture, or even (horrors!) humans. You are not...

Those of you who have just emerged from your first-ever group dog obedience training class have my sympathies. For the unprepared, that experience can...

Those of us who love dogs find the prospect of bringing home a new canine family member intoxicating and exhilarating. Well-planned in advance or...

Just like a good skunking doesnt stop most dogs from going after those black-and-white critters again the next time (darn it!), there are many dogs who seem goaded into more intense bee-chasing behavior after an unfortunate encounter of the stinging kind. Conversely, there are also dogs who become literally phobic about all small, flying creatures after a stinging incident. Then there are those who develop an obsessive-compulsive behavior known as fly-snapping.

Autism is not yet a diagnosis that can be given to dogs. Autism-like symptoms such as repetitive behavior or episodic aggression can be very challenging for dog guardians to understand and safely manage in the home, and it may be tempting to put the autism label on a dog if it fits. But Dr. Parthasarathy explains that a detailed history of the dog is essential for professionals to come up with a diagnosis.

mark the desired behavior with the click of a clicker (or the word "Yes!") and feed him a different treat.üPractice "Leave it!" with everything your dog likes in real life: food

Many people find it more difficult to teach a dog to lie down on cue than sit, accusing their dogs of being stubborn. But if you use the same lure-reward, force-free technique for "down" that you use for “sit,” you’ll soon succeed.

Classical conditioning, quite simply, is learning by association. It is when a person or animal associates one stimulus with something that was not previously associated.

I was recently contacted by a friend about a darling Border Collie puppy whose photo she found on Petfinder.com – and who was deaf. This friend is crazy about Border Collies, and also knows that I have a deaf Chinese Crested. Thus, she thought of me when she saw this puppy. The person who was fostering the pup was unable to keep her much longer, and did not want to send her to the local shelter as that would almost certainly result in the puppy’s euthanasia. Why? Because that shelter considers all deaf dogs as “unadoptable.”