Understanding Dog Behaviour

27/06/2025

If the answer is 42, What is the question?

EDIT: How many teeth do dogs have? 20 on top, 22 on bottom

27/06/2025

The dog’s scientific name is Canis lupus familiaris. Can you make up a better one? I’ll start us off:
Canis lupus barkus atnothingus

27/06/2025

A line from the book I'm writing: "Blaming the dog is just a deflection, we humans often perform, to avoid taking responsibility ourselves"

26/06/2025

I watched a man this morning trying to recall his dog (the dog had come to see my dogs). He called the dog about 20 times. Eventually, the dog returned, but on doing so was chastised by the man. Within a minute or so the dog ran off again to another dog, and the cycle repeated.
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What's going on?
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The man repeats what clearly doesn't work for him. Where's the reinforcement for his behaviour? Perhaps it's social, negative reinforcement (he feels more comfortable calling the dog so people don't think he doesn't care). Perhaps it is that the dog eventually returns, so the man has learnt to be persistent. I'd consider that to be maladaptation.
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What's happening for the dog?
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He has to return to his person. They are his family and safety net. But when he returns, there's going to be some level of aversive 'punishment'. It may be mild, but it causes a conflict in the dog's brain. The dog has learned to return with caution and stay about 6 feet away from the man for a while.
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This is a pattern we see over and over, year after year. I've been seeing it since I was a child.
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In part, this is caused by our human arrogance (you must do as I say) and human social norms (we must obey authority figures).
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How might we teach a dog to stay away from us? By making staying away reinforcing, and making returning punishing. That's exactly what this man (and thousands of others) are doing daily, but expecting the opposite result.
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If you see behaviour you don't want, think about how you would train that behaviour - then stop doing it!

26/06/2025

At what age did your water-loving dog take the plunge and swim? Moose is rightly cautious at the moment, although he loves to paddle.

24/06/2025

A training phrase I’ve always disliked is ‘make it happen’. It was used in a training club I want to many years ago. It meant, if you ask the dog to do something, you then have to make them do it.

The phrase lacks any form of evaluation. No consideration of why the dog might not be doing what was asked. No evaluation of our own training skills.

Just ‘make it happen’

It’s an insult to human intelligence.
It’s an insult to the art and science of behaviour modification.

Be curious
Love behaviour

It’s not about compliance at any cost, or ‘do it because I said so.’ It’s about understanding and influencing the animal’s choices as a willing participant.

23/06/2025

17/06/2025

I’ve removed the post about looking after dogs during this heatwave. No advice was given on the treatment of suspected heatstroke other than looking out for the signs and contacting your vet, yet people jump on it and are incredibly rude and arrogant about something they have misinterpreted. If it was poorly written, that’s on me, but what ever happened to make us so bloody rude to each other? 🙏

16/06/2025

Thought of the day: The best way to get a dog to meet our needs, is to first meet theirs.

15/06/2025

KIBBLE STORAGE.
(Please don’t turn this into a kibble bashing opportunity)

How do you store your kibble?
Many manufactures give conflicting advice. Some say it should be stored in an airtight container, while others say it shouldn’t be.

Full disclosure (because people like to make assumptions), I feed some cold pressed kibble, some PURE (Dehydrated), some home cooking, then some home made meatballs, sardines, eggs, and liver as treats, and a small amount of raw.

14/06/2025

What am I doing? Oh, just brushing manure onto my artificial grass, stinking out the neighbourhood, in the hope it will encourage Monty to walk on it. 🤷‍♂️🙄🤪