Category: Dog Behavior
Do treats reward aggression?
This dog was about to be euthanized because he was aggressive to kids and dogs. See what happens when you blow in his face and watch what happens when he gets rewarded for this behavior in this video by the late Dr. Sophia Yin. This is a must see for anyone who is counter-conditioning. Training Aggression? Counter-conditioning…
What is Shaping Behavior?
Shaping dog behavior is a reward based technique based on teaching a target behavior is a series of gradual steps, each steps being a slight extension of that last. Shaping is an expression often used by people who are familiar with clicker training, as clicker training is an ideal method for shaping behavior relatively quickly…
Control Barking
Most people find excessive dog barking very annoying. But barking is only a symptom of another problem. Understanding why your dog is barking is the first step toward controlling it. Certainly many dogs bark when someone is at the door. This is the equivalent of a dog warning its pack that there are approaching strangers or possible intruders.…
I’d Rather Play with a Game Winner than a Contest Winner
More on social cognition: The takeaway from the paper: Social cognition in the domestic dog: behaviour of spectators towards participants in interspecific games is that spectator dogs preferred to approach the winner of the games opposed to approaching either winner or loser of a competition. This is a really interesting study on a number of levels. But…
Do aggressive dogs have more trouble understanding humans?
Dogs are better than monkeys when it comes to reading our social cues to find hidden food and according to this study, Human-like Social Skills in Dogs?, are “unusually skilled as reading human social and communicative behavior”. Yet in a study with selectively bred foxes who were not selected for this skill, but bred to…
Pay Attention!
There are excellent reasons for training your dog to pay attention, especially if they are reactive or aggressive. Many aggressive dogs are anxious about the situation they are in and unable to properly assess whether there is a legitimate threat. Getting and keeping your dog’s attention is one of the first steps needed in treating…
Sound reactivity and paw preference
Have you actually paid attention – do you know what paw preference your dog has, if any? Some studies suggest (1) that female dogs might be more right-pawed on average, while males tend to be left-pawed, and some studies suggest preference might be flexible depending on the circumstances. (2) However, dogs without a significant paw preference…