Issue 11 | FEBRUARY 2019

IAABC’s Position on Dominance  

Dominance is a concept we frequently encounter in discussions of companion animal behavior. Many pet owners believe that the most important thing they can do to ensure their animal behaves...

By The IAABC Editing Team

Setting Everybunny Up for Success: A 3-Part Series on Helping Rabbits Succeed in Their Adoptive Home

Foster parents are the backbone of any rescue operation.

By Emily Cassell

What Does Maslow’s Pinnacle Mean for Horses?

How best to meet the behavioural and emotional needs of horses is the crux of a typical behavioural consultation. The job of the behaviour consultant is to tread the path...

By Catherine Bell, CHBC

Euthanasia in Shelters: Data and Decisionmaking

Euthanasia in shelters is a frequently discussed topic among staff, volunteers, and increasingly on social media by people with little experience of the realities of the situation being discussed. Looking...

By Amy Schindler

Boo! Training a Bear: 2018

Readers were introduced to Boo, a male grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), in the Winter 2018 issue of the IAABC Foundation Journal. Born in 2002,  Boo weighs around 550-600 pounds in...

By Cindy Peacock CPDT-KA, KPA-CTP

The Most Successful Case I Ever Lost

We are teacher and trainers. We are also learners. Our animal clients have lessons for us, it seems, each time we meet. When is it time to observe? When is...

By Michael Baugh, CDBC

The Shelter Playgroup Alliance

Toward the end of 2017, I was putting the final touches on a canine enrichment program for the open-admission, high-volume shelter at which I am a behavior and training consultant....

By Mara Velez, MA, CPDT-KA

Breed Differences in Canine Behavior Are Heritable. Why the Fuss?

On January 1, a research article titled “Highly Heritable and Functionally Relevant Breed Differences in Dog Behavior” became publicly available as a preprint. The authors were Evan MacLean (University of...

By Robin L. Foster, PhD

Shaping Service Dogs to Overcome Fear of Unknown Surfaces

A central tenet of service dog training is fostering non-reactivity to various stimuli to ensure a resilient and reliable service dog for the client. Service dogs should remain relatively unfazed...

By Matthias Lenz

What are we going to do with these cats?! Case studies in difficult-to-home shelter cats.

I finally had a moment to get some work done on my laptop, so I pulled a chair up to the desk and started typing away. Oomie joined me. The...

By Cheryl Kolus, DVM

Under Pressure: How Interspecific Synchrony Mediated by Spatial Pressure can Make or Break a Detection Team

Recently one of my scent class students, I’ll call her June, got me thinking a lot about pressure. This article on the application of spatial pressure, whether intentional or inadvertent,...

By Kathryn E. Gordon

The Benefits of Teaching a Parrot Tricks

Living with an intelligent exotic animal like a parrot can be an absolute joy. It can also be quite challenging trying to meet the complex needs of these marvelous sentient...

By Patricia K. Anderson, PhD

Environmental Enrichment for the Horse: The Need for Companionship

As highlighted in the previous article Environmental Enrichment for the Horse: the Need to Forage, environmental enrichment can be defined as the additions and/or alterations made to a domesticated animal’s environment with...

By Louise Nicholls

There’s No Scientific Reason to Believe Littermate Syndrome Exists

Searching Google Scholar for “littermate syndrome” + “canines” yields no relevant results. If the scientific community is silent on the issue of “littermate syndrome,” why do behavior consultants keep preaching...

By Kayla Fratt, CDBC

Hunting Enrichment Part 2: The great outdoors

By Kathryn Weil If you ask clients why they do not allow their cat outdoor access, you will hear a few common things: The client is fearful that harm will...

By Kathryn Weil

Cooperative Care: The How and the Why

Cooperative care involves training an animal to not only tolerate handling and husbandry procedures, but to be an active, willing participant in these experiences. In this column, we highlight some...

Directional Control: Not Just for Working Dogs

Moses leaps into action, darting across the field and vaulting onto a platform located 25 yards away. Happily holding there, he waits for the next cue, then runs to the...

By Robin Gruebel