Dress for Success, Part 1: Collars

by lennearbNo Comments
Story 1 We were walking our dog near our house when the dog ran up to greet Sirius Black. We looked around, but saw no one near the dog. When he approached close enough, we were able to catch hold of his collar and read the address, less than a block away. A minute later, we were ringing the doorbell and returning the dog home to his family, who didn't even know he was missing yet. Story 2 We were walking our dog near our house when the dog ran up to greet Sirius Black. We looked around, but saw no one near the dog. When she approached close enough, we were able to catch hold of her collar and read the information. The phone number had been disconnected, and the address turned out to be out of date. It took close to 18 hours to locate the dogs owner, only a few blocks away, and get her home.   Both of these stories are...
Read More

4 Pieces of Advice for Me

by lennearbNo Comments
Sometimes people talk about writing a letter to their younger selves. I haven't found any service that will deliver one of those yet, so I hope you can benefit from my advice. Train Earlier Bailey earner her nickname as the best dog. No matter what you wanted to do, she was happy to do it with you, whether that was a long hike or a lazy day on the couch. Her easy-going nature made it easy to ignore her less appealing traits, like going through the trash, as well as her issues, like stress in the car. When I finally started training with her, when she was 8, she was able to pass the Canine Good Citizen test on the first try. The experience also helped with other issues, like the car stress. I only wish I had tried it sooner. Don't Live Downtown Don't get me wrong: living downtown is the right choice for a lot of people, and it even seems to...
Read More
Here’s to 6 More Years!

Here’s to 6 More Years!

by lennearb2 Comments
Later this week, we'll celebrate the sixth anniversary of Sirius Black's adoption. I find this almost impossible to believe, but it's true. A lot has happened since we first brought him home, and he lay motionless on the floor of our living room, giving his best impression of a dog with no personality. When we first brought him home, I was an animal welfare professional, but far from a behavior professional. My husband—who wasn't even my husband yet—had never had a dog before. All three of us had a lot to learn! We've made some mistakes along the way. In fact, have some useful advice stored up for the future; things like, don't take your noise-phobic dog to a sesquicentennial of a Civil War battle, unless you want to spend the entire day walking at the far end of the battlefield from all the events. But, mostly, I have good memories. We've been through a lot together, including three moves, several job changes,...
Read More

A Mile on Someone Else’s Leash

by lennearbNo Comments
A few times a year, we will have friends or family bring their dogs along on a visit.* For someone who has not brought a new pet home in more than a half decade (more about that next week), it can be easy to forget the experience of having a new pet in your home. When you bring a new pet home, whether it's your first or your fifth, there is an immediate change to your schedule. It just takes longer to feed, walk, and play with multiple dogs than it does to do the same thing with one. And so often they need to be fed separately. Or what if the new dog won't eat? What if all the dogs just want to eat someone else's food? When you step out of the house, the issues continue. Will the dog react to a squirrel? What about a rabbit? A jogger? Another dog? When I walk with Sirius Black, I more or less...
Read More

Happy Fourth!

by lennearbNo Comments
I love fireworks and thunderstorms. I feel almost guilty admitting this, when these loud noises are so terrifying for so many dogs, including Sirius Black. However, at moments like this, it seems especially important to admit the truth. This is Fourth of July weekend, and I will probably attend at least two fireworks shows this weekend. In fact, a lot of my planning around Fourth of July usually goes into deciding when and where to attend fireworks. And, since this is the mid-Atlantic in summer, I have been told to expect thunderstorms several days this weekend. That will make it an even tougher weekend for Sirius, who is already on edge after several bad storms this past week. It's always important to practice good fireworks safety, but it's especially important to look out for the safety of our pets during this holiday. Every year, many dogs and cats are reported missing over this weekend, since even pets that normally don't react to...
Read More

5 Considerations When Adopting a Dog

by lennearbNo Comments
Obviously, there are a lot more than 5 things you have to consider when you are adopting a pet. However, here are 5 that I believe are important when adopting a dog, but which often get overlooked in the urge to ooh over that cute little face. Size: Size is an important factor. It will affect many other aspects, such as expenses and energy level, and may also impact the expected lifespan of your new dog. Additionally, for apartment and condo-dwellers and renters of all types, size may impact where you can live. If you live somewhere with size restrictions, or think that you may, this is especially important. If adult size is particularly important to you, you may want to consider adopting and adult dog, as predicted adult-size of mixed breed puppies is not always reliable. I have known 80-pound dogs that were expected to be no more than 50 and 30-pound dogs that were expected to reach 50. Age: Let...
Read More

An Ounce of Prevention

by lennearbNo Comments
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We've all heard it, but we don't always apply it successfully to our own lives. However, prevention, often in the form of management, is a key aspect of training and behavior modification. This is especially important when we bring a new pet into our lives. Of course, no new pet, whether 8-weeks-old or 8-years-old is a completely blank slate; but, when we bring a new pet into our homes, we are creating new relationships and setting new patterns for behavior. At this point, we have the opportunity to act to prevent many behaviors that can cause problems in the future. One important step in this process is taking stock of the environment your new pet will be entering. Are there items a puppy or an anxious dog might chew? Expensive or irreplaceable items that might be knocked over or destroyed? For cats, is there an easily accessible litterbox that is not being used...
Read More

Behavior Suppression

by lennearb1 Comment
"What if he has no personality?" "He has a personality." "How do you know?" We both stared at the dog, who was lying unmoving on the floor of the living room, in the same spot where he had lain down upon entering the room. No personality was in evidence. Six years of experience has proven me right: Sirius Black is full of personality. However, it is equally true that he demonstrated little of this personality during the first days and even weeks in our home. In fact, confident as i was that he had a personality somewhere, i anxiously questioned the trainer about the fact that he wasn't accepting trrats from us and other similar concerns. While not always as extreme as what we observed during our first days with Sirius, it is common to observe a reduced behavior in dogs both in the shelter and in the immediate post-adoption period. This period is sometimes referred to as the "honeymoon" period, because adopters may observe...
Read More
How I Got Here

How I Got Here

by lennearbNo Comments
My parents were visiting this weekend, and that got me thinking about a question I am asked fairly often: How did you become interested in working with multi-pet households? It's a question that I am never sure how to answer because I have never felt that it was something I became interested in, but rather, that I was born into. When I was born, my parents' household consisted of three dogs and a cat. One dog and a cat were my mother's from before their marriage, while one dog was my father's. They had rescued the third dog when they found her running loose in a grocery story parking lot. While these animals were a story of integration themselves, throughout my childhood, the animal composition of our household changed several times. As exciting or painful as each change was in itself, every change also necessitated a process of integration help new and resident animals adjust to new routines. During my childhood, I was...
Read More

Out of Place

by lennearb1 Comment
We were walking today when we saw two Canadian geese. I barely noticed them, as we see geese several times a week, but Sirius, who normally walks by geese without a second glance, started watching them intently as he prepared to charge or bark. What made these geese worth noticing? Instead of being by a lake or stream, they were hanging out on the University of Maryland Quad. In other words, they were out of place. When working with dogs, on both training and behavior modification, it is important to understand how they see the world and when they will or will not generalize. In my training classes, I often tell my students that dogs don't generalize well. No matter how well they demonstrate "Leave It" in class, they are likely to go home and revert to their previous habits of picking up things that catch their attention, unless a lot of work is put into the activity at home. That happens because, in...
Read More
«‹678910›»