Training

Play is a widespread feature of social animals. Humans play. Dogs play. Maybe our shared need for and love of play is part of...

Crates are management tools meant to help your dog feel safe during your absence and other times he may need to chill. Dogs who learn to love their crates use them independently for relief and safety .

Want to teach your dog to talk? Teaching a dog to “Speak” is a simple trick, especially if your dog is already vocal. It...

give the cue

Teaching your dog to “yield to the pressure” of the leash can help you safely and easily end an encounter between your leashed dog...

When I'm driving on the road and see a dog in someone else's car, it makes me smile. I love it when people care enough about their dogs to chauffeur them around town. I love it even more when the dog is in a crate or seat belted in place. My smile quickly vanishes, however, if the dog has her head stuck out the window, is sitting in the driver's lap, darting back and forth across the seats, or worse, riding loose in the back of an open pickup truck. And the ultimate crime – leaving a dog in a hot car – motivates me to grab my cell phone and call out the animal cops. As much as we love our dogs and want them with us all the time, we have an incontrovertible obligation to transport them safely, for their own welfare as well as ours, and that of other drivers on the roads. All dogs, large and small, should learn to ride politely in their cars. There's a long list of safety hazards concomitant with having an unrestrained obstreperous canine in a moving vehicle.

Does your dog know how to target? If not, the two of you may be missing out on one of the most versatile behaviors to come along since the rise in popularity of the positive dog training philosophy.

The super-fun walks described in our “Walk This Way” article in last month’s issue aren’t always possible; there are times when dogs do need...

The curly brown dog stamped his feet and stared at his handler. He had retrieved the plastic dummy countless times. Now what? Something as simple as that look is all it took to start Kathryn Monroe of Mahtomedi, Minnesota, on a quest. It would ultimately take her across the country in search of the knowledge and skills to train her Portuguese Water Dog, Gaucho, to do what his breeding dictated. Work. Water work, specifically. Like many people, Monroe had gotten involved with a breed because she was looking for a dog with an affinity for something she loved. Monroe is a boater. When asked if she had water sports in mind when she chose a PWD, she said, Water sports? I hate water sports! I don't swim

In 1975, horse trainer Linda Tellington-Jones studied the Feldenkrais Method with its founder, Moishe Feldenkrais. In this form of bodywork for people, gentle and...

a Papillon in training to become a service dog, demonstrates a stretching/hand-control exercise where the client is asked to roll the ball toward the dog, and the dog rolls it back.üTim (Debi's husband) demonstrates some of the exercises that dogs can help with during animal-assisted physical therapy. In this exercise, the dog was directed to stand in place as the client maintained his balance while reached and stretching toward the dog.

How to safely confine burrowers, bounders, beavers, and bolters. Otis the Bloodhound was an opportunistic escapee. I discovered his talent one day while working at the front desk at the Marin Humane Society, early in my animal protection career. A woman came in asking if we might know where a Bloodhound lived, because he kept visiting her house every day. He was charming, she said, but she worried that he might get hit by a car.