Tip Five From the Expert: Getting the most out of your dogFrom the series 10 Tips on How to Form a Lifelong Bond with your Dog Here’s the thing with punishment… It works. However, that doesn’t mean we should use it; behaviour is often an expression of an emotional state. Take the dog that barks at other dogs
Tip Four From the Expert: Teaching each otherFrom the series 10 Tips on How to Form a Lifelong Bond with your Dog Classical conditioning The terminology around how animals learn can be really confusing. The two ways animals learn that we use most in both training and behaviour therapy are classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is
Tip Three From the Expert: Falling in LoveFrom the series 10 Tips on How to Form a Lifelong Bond with your Dog Of course you’ll like your puppy straight away – we’re biologically programmed to like baby things. But you’ll fall in love over time, as you get to know them and as they get to know you.
Tip Two From the Expert: SocialisationFrom the series 10 Tips on How to Form a Lifelong Bond with your Dog Dogs are altricial, which means that they’re born ‘under-baked’ and still have some developing to do (unlike horses, for example, who because they’re a prey species need to be ready to go pretty much straight away). Part of
Tip One From the Expert: Puppy PersonalityFrom the series 10 Tips on How to Form a Lifelong Bond with your Dog Behaviour is a complex expression of both nature (genetics) and nurture (the environment your dog grows up in), so there’s a lot to think about before your puppy is even born. This is how I explain it:
Freya is delighted to introduce Rachel, an animal behavioural scientist, who has very kindly agreed to share her knowledge and experience with us all. For the next ten weeks we will be publishing each of her top ten tips on how to help enhance our personal relationships with our pooches and form a lifelong bond.
Feelings run high when it comes to giving your dog rawhide treats. I recently shared a video on one of the cockapoo Facebook groups I follow; it had originally been posted by someone who felt it important to highlight the negative manufacture of rawhide in China and it was interesting to read the feedback. Most
Cockapoos are one of the oldest of the hybrid dog breeds. Created in the US in the 50s, they were introduced into the UK around 10 years ago. The fact that pairing any two breeds results in what are effectively ‘mongrels’, means that cockapoo breeding can never be an exact science hence the myriad of
I did a great deal of research about when (and if) you should be spaying or neutering your dog. There are so many contradicting viewpoints, the most controversial being the American trend of spaying/castrating a puppy before it reaches six months old. The stats are varied, and while they all cite a medical value in
Feeding your puppy or dog a raw food diet has become very popular over the last few years and the jury is still out on whether this can be harmful — both to us and our dogs — because of the bacteria and parasites present in raw-meat products. There are two sides to the raw food argument