by Joshua | Apr 30, 2017 | contents, Dog, contents
If you love dogs and haven’t yet heard about the canine “cognitive revolution,” you’ve been living in a bubble. Sara Shettleworth broadly defines cognition as “an array of mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on input (information) from the...
by Joshua | Apr 30, 2017 | Parrot
Kokoda is a 16-month-old female Eclectus Parrot. She was purchased from an Eclectus Specialist breeder in New South Wales and sent to me in Western Australia at around 14 weeks of age, after she was fully weaned and fledged. Kokoda is very cheeky, a total clown who...
by Joshua | Apr 29, 2017 | Other Topics
A veterinary behaviorist friend of mine once asked me, “Why do people pay me for my advice and then either ignore it or tell me I’m wrong?” I don’t think she really expected an answer. She was just expressing her frustration with clients who resisted...
by Joshua | Apr 29, 2017 | Other Topics, News
Stand by for #IAABC2018! More than 200 people attended our 2017 conference in Los Angeles last month, and we were overwhelmed by the energy and friendship that developed between people from so many different backgrounds. The first-ever session of Building your...
by Joshua | Apr 27, 2017 | Working Animals
The broad field of animal-assisted interventions (AAI) has grown in popularity and publicity in the past decade. One hears more and more reports in the media about the value of animals involved in visitation programs to hospitals and schools, reading-to-animal...
by Joshua | Apr 27, 2017 | Dog
The idea that, through certain socialization protocols, we can train a dog as a youngster to inhibit its bite as an adult is the foundation for many aspects of living with dogs: When we choose to take puppies from their mother, how we socialize them the first 16...
by Joshua | Apr 26, 2017 | Shelter
Since 1990 I have been volunteering in or working with a variety of shelters and rescue groups, until 2013 when I accepted a full-time position at Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah. While there, one of my fellow behavior consultants, Allie Bender, and I...
by Joshua | Apr 25, 2017 | Business of Behavior
Part Two of The Business of Animal Behavior in the 21st Century Marketplace Series In our first article in this series, we tackled some of our collective industry assumptions about financial obstacles. We talked about the important reasons why we need to start to...
by Joshua | Apr 25, 2017 | Shelter
The winter months are cold and damp in Kansas. During this time, a lot of our dogs do not get out for enough exercise. At the Lawrence Humane Society, we do not have indoor space for exercising our dogs. We are situated on 4 acres, and most of our property is divided...
by Joshua | Apr 25, 2017 | Sciences
Every behavior consultant knows not to rely on a client’s description of a pet’s behavior—you have to see that behavior yourself. Trained eyes see differently. This is just as true for analyzing research studies. It is important to understand the underlying principles...
by Joshua | Apr 25, 2017 | Sciences
This video pops up every so often on social media as new groups find it and, um, chime in: /wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Dogs-With-A-Perfect-Pitch.mp4 The claim is, this is a demonstration that dogs have “perfect pitch.” If that were true, the dogs would have to be...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Shelter
As I walked through the intake room of a large county animal shelter in Dayton, Ohio, evaluating dogs to enroll in the Behavior Modification and Enrichment Program (BMP), I stopped in front of a kennel and looked down at a young pit bull–type puppy, with a turned-up...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Cat
Although cats are stereotypically thought to be aloof and unsocial, domestic cats display great flexibility in their social behavior. Cats have the ability to live solitarily, to live in extremely gregarious colonies, and to live socially in homes with humans and...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Dog
As we all know, clients almost always want to know why their dogs are having problems. Many hasten to blame themselves (often citing certain TV shows and their failure to be good pack leaders). Many have focused on a single event from which they are sure the problem...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Shelter
Over the past 15 to 20 years, behavior evaluations have become the standard of care in shelters for identifying dangerous and potentially aggressive dogs that may not do well in a home as a pet. Today 28 percent of shelters use a formal evaluation and about 60 percent...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Horse
One of the benefits of training with positive reinforcement is eagerness in training. Getting an experienced animal to come to you or stay with you is not usually a problem. Yet the pendulum swings both ways. We must train our animals what they should do instead of...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Parrot
One of the benefits of training with positive reinforcement is eagerness in training. Getting an experienced animal to come to you or stay with you is not usually a problem. Yet the pendulum swings both ways. We must train our animals what they should do instead of...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Horse
Understanding body language is one of the core skills anyone living with animals needs in order to make the best decisions about their care. If you can see that what you’re doing is making your animal uncomfortable, that’s important information to help make...
by Joshua | Apr 18, 2017 | Parrot
This issue, we caught up with Joanna Berger, who recently graduated with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Medicine. As part of her Master’s project, Joanna traveled to Virginia to work with a parrot sanctuary called...
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