We rearranged some furniture this week to make room for an event, and I guess it was enough to make someone wonder if the house rules had changed. (Hint: they hadn’t.) I looked up from my computer to see that Undómiel had brought a recreational bone onto the chair with… Continue reading
I’m not supposed to work on my computer in bed (spine) but darn it, the company is better here.
I made a mistake yesterday. I went to a drawer in the kitchen. Not just any drawer, it’s the not-a-junk drawer, where I keep among other things the dogs’ nail trimmers. As I opened the drawer, two dogs materialized behind me, sitting politely with ears forward and eyes bright. So of… Continue reading
The temperature has been climbing all day and we’ve now broken 0 degrees F! (-18 C) so I thought I’d share some of our cold weather activity and precautions. I don’t keep my dogs inside, as they love to play in the yard, but they definitely get to come inside… Continue reading
When I talk about behavior chains, I talk about the importance of completing the chain. Because in a chain each cue serves as a reinforcer for a previous behavior, dropping cues is actually failing to reinforce — and we know that’s a bad thing. Unreliable reinforcement leads to unreliable behavior. Variable… Continue reading
Be very careful when you say you want a smart dog. Undómiel jumped up to join me and I reminded her “no bones on the furniture” (a cue she knows). So she put it on my lapdesk. Continue reading
No time like the present…. Undómiel and I had to make a trip yesterday to the veterinary clinic for an irritation on her face, and while I had planned to get around to teaching a chin rest for vet exams and treatment, I hadn’t actually done it yet. Yes, professionals… Continue reading
We’ve posted several times on training for when life catches you off-guard, like when you forget to put the meat in the fridge instead of on the floor. I had one of those moments today. Over the weekend I was offered a big mirror, salvaged from a dressing room in the… Continue reading
Do dogs and other animals have imagination? While scientists now agree that animals are conscious (duh!) and many or most agree they are sentient, it’s harder to say how much creative and meta-thinking animals might do. We can listen to a human child tell us a silly story he’s invented, but the… Continue reading
I have been a terrible pet parent, and I have not been spamming the blog with puppy photos and puppy stories. I apologize, I’ve been crazy busy, and in the end it’s more important to spend those extra minutes with the puppy rather than writing about her. But today I’m… Continue reading