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...
Setting Everybunny Up for Success: A 3-Part Series on Helping Rabbits Succeed in Their Adoptive Home Part 2 – The Foster Home
Foster parents are the backbone of any rescue operation.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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Mike is an emerging animal behaviorist sitting in Minnesota in the US. He carries an MSc in social science research methods (U. of Kentucky) and brings a passion for understanding how the methods we favor shape the knowledge we privilege. Coming from careers in teaching and non-profit program evaluation, he found companion animal behavior by accident helping anxious feline friends in a unique shelter in Ohio. It is a privilege and a joy to combine these and advance the journal in this exciting time of growth.
Alexandra is a certified dog behavior consultant and holds a PhD in neuroscience. She has spent over a decade in academic research and is author of numerous scientific articles on different aspects of brain development, including olfaction, neurogenesis, and memory formation. Her work as a behavior consultant focuses on creating trusting relationships between humans and their dogs through communication, respect, and science-based knowledge. Alexandra is very dedicated to promoting more science within the dog training world. She supports dog guardians and professionals to build a solid understanding of scientific principles and provides guidance on how to apply these to life with dogs. She runs Canine Mindscape in Alicante, Spain.
I’m an Argentinean-Italian dog trainer and CSAT who spent eight amazing years in Brazil learning and working with dogs. Now based in Europe, I volunteer with the IAABC as a translator and, in my free time, help rehomed dogs settle into their new families. I love bridging languages—and hearts—between people and their dogs.
I’m a translator, editor and journalist, as well as canine educator for children and families, specialized in canine body language. I am part of the IAABC Family since 2019, as Language Director at the IAABC and Translators Team Lead at the IAABC Foundation, at the moment. I volunteer at local shelters and promote bite prevention and animal welfare at schools and events all over my country, Uruguay.
I’m a Chilean veterinarian and certified dog trainer, based in Madrid and working at a veterinary clinic. I’ve been volunteering with the IAABC and the IAABC Foundation for over seven years. In my free time, I help dogs and their guardians strengthen their bond, and I love spending quality time with my own dogs.
Master’s Degree in Natural Sciences, with a strong interest in environmental sustainability and the protection of natural ecosystems. Passionate about writing and science communication, she collaborates with multidisciplinary teams on research projects, such as Equine International, and with non-profit initiatives in the environmental and cultural fields. She is writing for different magazines, including IAABC Foundation. Her major goal is to improve horse’s welfare through behaviour research and empirical practice.
Adrienne Hovey is the copy editor for the IAABC Foundation journal and the owner of 
I believe that knowledge from a wide range of disciplines fosters a more empathetic, curious, and engaging world. I am passionate about social, environmental, and minority rights issues (both human and non-human), and this has invariably led me down the road of multi-species anthropology. Perpetually curious about the world we live in, I hope to contribute towards making the world a kinder place for all of us earthlings to live on!
Beckie Wheldon is based in England, UK, and has been supporting the IAABC Foundation Journal team as a volunteer journal content editor since early 2025. She has a BSc (Hons) Animal Behaviour and Welfare, and has recently completed a MSc Clinical Animal Behaviour. With a passion for both practical and theory, Beckie is proud to be a part of the journal submission journey and support the process of applied animal behaviour information and research getting from our writers to the readers. As her full-time career, Beckie is currently part of the UK veterinary charity, PDSA, as a Learning and Development Business Partner for Veterinary, where she supports the professional development of people in their Veterinary Hospitals. Her last position was with the rescue charity, Dogs Trust, as a Canine Behavioural Welfare Manager, where she worked on embedding evidence-based behavioural welfare best practices throughout policy and practices, with both internal and external professional stakeholders, such as the police and military. With a varied background in kennels, caregiver education, and charity dog training classes, Beckie is also an accredited Animal Training Instructor (APDT UK) and an Associate Clinical Animal Behaviourist (APBC).
Erin Jones, PhD, IAABC-ADT, CDBC, CPDT-KA, CANZ-ATI, CANZ-ABC, is the Journal Director of the IAABC Foundation Journal. She holds a PhD in Human–Animal Studies, an MSc in Anthrozoology, a PG Dip in Animal Welfare, and a BSc (Hons) in Anthropology and Psychology. An international presenter, editor, writer and mentor, Erin’s writing bridges research and practice with a focus on the intersection of philosophy, ethics and dog-centered behaviour practice. She is the author of Constructing Canine Consent and co-editor of Topics in Non/Human Coexistence and numerous academic and trade journal publications.