Over the years, I have been increasingly interested in adolescent dogs for a number of reasons. First, this is a hugely challenging period of time for dog guardians – and an age when many dogs are given up. It’s also probably a challenging time for the dogs themselves. That would explain why their behavior often… Continue reading The Terrible Teens – Adolescence in Dogs
Stress resilience is the ability to effectively respond to stress. In humans, higher levels of stress resilience are associated with decreased susceptibility to mental health disorders. Poor stress resilience is associated with mental and physical health concerns and decreased quality of life. Basically, stress resilience is key to living a good life. Dogs that have… Continue reading Building resilience: effort, reward, and stress coping
This month we’re going to take a look at fear learning. Fear and anxiety underly many of the behavior issues in dogs. Understanding the subtleties of how fear works can help us prevent and address it more effectively. First, it’s important to understand how fear develops in the first place. Certain things are innately frightening… Continue reading The Development of Fear
Currently, the primary way of addressing fear in dogs is through the use of desensitization and counter conditioning. For this month’s blog post, I am going to spend some time digging into the details of what counter conditioning is, how it functions, and what its limitations are. Counter conditioning refers to the process of… Continue reading Making the most of counter conditioning
Trainers are well-versed in learning theory. This is for good reason because a strong foundation in instrumental conditioning is essential for being able to effectively change behavior in dogs. However, it’s not the only thing that matters. There are many other aspects of behavior that are also important. These include development, stress, species-typical behavior… Continue reading Ethology in Training and Behavior – Why Does it Matter?
Most experienced trainers are fairly well-versed in the basic principles of instrumental learning. Primarily, that means the antecedent-behavior-consequence sequence and the four types of instrumental learning: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. These concepts are fundamental to our understanding of why animals do what they do and how to change their behavior.… Continue reading Why advanced instrumental learning?
The Question I recently came across a paper (Bräm Dubé et al. 2020) that looked at a characteristic called ‘sensory processing sensitivity’ or, more informally, ‘high sensitivity’. The authors define “high sensitivity” as a personality trait where people 1) process sensory information more deeply than normal, 2) are hyperaware of stimuli, and 3) react to… Continue reading Highly sensitive personality and behavior problems in dogs
Group cohesion, affiliation, and being in sync This month I’ll be focusing on social relationships between dogs, both in this blog post and in the Research Bites webinar. Dogs are social animals. They live in groups – either with other people or with other people and dogs (or other animals). In order for groups… Continue reading Assessing affiliation between dogs
The world seems like a very stressful and serious place right now. This month, I wanted to do something a little different and share with you some research that just brings me joy and reminds me why I love animals so much and why I am an animal behaviorist. Wolves fetch! We still don’t fully… Continue reading Celebrating animal behavior
Today, I return to my series on quotes that have inspired me. The first in this series was way back in January of this year when I wrote about the danger of assumptions. This month, I’d like to talk about the value of admitting that we don’t have all of the answers. Data and evidence are… Continue reading Embracing the Unknown
