Good Doggy Saratoga

15/02/2023

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When it's too hot or cold outside, the ground can put your dog's paws at risk of injury. That's why you should train your pup how to wear dog boots.

22/01/2023

When clients from 9 years ago hunt you down to make sure your company is the one to help train their new pup 🥰

Welcome back Debby & Chuck
& Welcome Star 🤩

Debby & Chuck were amazing back in 2014 at the first few classes Ben taught for their dog Bear 🐻 & they also really showed up today in class with Star ⭐️. We love making long lasting connections like that. We are thrilled to show off the new skills we’ve built on over the last decade to help build the same relationship with a new pup ♥️

14/10/2022

good example of what cooperative care can look like at the groomer!

12/10/2022

A few weeks ago, this would have been impossible, as Jameson was absolutely terrified of Daisy. Now he loves her so much we're working on him following her around too much.

She also loves working with him and helps mom and dad deliver treats during training sessions.

29/04/2022

"[D]og breed is generally a poor predictor of individual behavior and should not be used to inform decisions relating to selection of a pet dog..."

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0639

Pairing owner surveys and genetics for pet dogs challenges behavioral breed stereotypes.

08/04/2022

29/03/2022

Cooperative Care Training Demonstration by our apprentice trainer Laura at her grooming salon, Honey Bee Grooming

16/02/2022

Cooperative Care and Fear Free demonstration

11/02/2022

Roses are red, violets are blue, but keep the flowers up high just for you!

11/02/2022

Candy may be sweet, but it's potentially dangerous for your pet.

11/02/2022

Love may be in the air, but keep the chocolate to yourself!

18/09/2021

Been telling this story for years.

Ever hear a guy say that he’s a ‘total alpha’?

Scientifically speaking, he’s a total do**he.

Today’s Moment of Science… the myth of alpha wolves.

The dynamics of dominance hierarchies vary from species to species. Elder blue-footed b***y siblings dole out the noogies to their little siblings, and chickens have literal pecking orders. Most species have dominant male hierarchies. However, there are various types of female-based hierarchies in nature, like worker-queen systems for some insect species.

Notably, our evolutionary cousin the bonobos are a female dominant society, a likely plot by antifa to destroy masculinity. Obviously.

Though we think of dominance as ‘better,’ it comes with drawbacks. The great t**s- uh, the bird species- have ‘high ranking’ animals with a higher metabolism and larger food requirement. Which is easy enough to come by for a human who can drive their ass to 7-Eleven, but wild great t**s need to throw themselves around for their food, even dominant wild great t**s.

Dominant animals in species like bonobos have higher levels of hormones with an immunosuppressant effect. Which makes it sound like a bad idea to fight with an alpha great ape because they’re hopped up on testosterone and they’re here for a good time, not a long time.

So, about ‘alphas.’

In 1947, Rudolph Schenkel published a groundbreaking paper called ‘Expression Studies on Wolves.’ He studied captive wolves in Switzerland’s Zoo Basel to better understand wolf behavior. He observed that packs had a dominant “bitch wolf” and “lead (male) wolf.” They would face off in little wolf thunderdomes with other members of their s*x to protect their status and compare who had the biggest muscles and the best shoes.

To be fair, we knew s**t about wolf behavior at the time. Anything past “wolf says woof” was new information.

The paper could have faded into obscurity, only to be discussed amongst experts in the field as are most scientific papers. Instead, in 1970 biologist L. David Mech wrote a book titled The Wolf: Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species. Mech had also done observational studies of wolves for his PhD and seen what he thought to be the same behavior of competing for dominance.

Extrapolating the study to all species, some humans have been insufferably calling themselves ‘alpha males’ ever since.

However, in 1999, Mech published a new paper.

In ‘Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs,’ a lot of assumptions are revisited. The ‘lead’ male and female? Those turned out to be what scientists call ‘parents.’

In the wild, wolf packs don’t assemble from a bunch of unrelated wolves with special talents coming together to defeat Thanos (but I would subscribe to that newsletter). Wolf packs are just two parent wolves raising their pups until they go off and start packs of their own. The wolf pups don’t fight to be in charge of anything, they often just wrestle with their siblings to play. Or maybe they have one sibling they’re trying to punch in the dick for amusement, I don’t know their life.

Looking back, Schenkel mentioned in his original work that it was “possible” the wolf packs were parents with their pups. But “it might be a family” was nowhere near as interesting as “behold, the alpha and the bitch.”

Mech has been trying to get the original book out of print for years, to no avail.

Until that happens, if you hear a guy proudly declare himself both an ‘alpha male’ and a ‘rational thinker,’ ask when he’s gonna think rationally about giving up on the myth of the alpha male.

This has been your Moment of Science, wishing there were even more birds named after the festive bits of anatomy.

To get the MOS delivered to your inbox every weekday and join for exclusive livestreams (including one tomorrow afternoon), head to patreon.com/scibabe.

This is my friend Kraus back in my old apartment in Burbank with their husky, wolves, and a SciBud.

30/07/2021

Saratoga County has been classified by the CDC as having "Significant" community spread of Covid-19. While all types of vaccination have been shown to reduce severity for all variants, the Delta variant appears to spread just as easily through vaccinated as unvaccinated populations.

With this in mind, Good Doggy Saratoga will be requiring both vaccinations and masks for in-person group classes and will continue to monitor the situation while we evaluate whether group classes need to be suspended again.

We will also be discontinuing in-person in-home training entirely. Existing plans will continue through their conclusions, but new private training will be virtual only.

While these are similar to the decisions made a year ago, they're harder decisions to have made. Pandemic fatigue is affecting us all, and this year it seems there will be less government support for the measures required to end this pandemic. We hope you'll join us in understanding the difference between "legal" and "safe" and support our decisions to keep you and your family as safe as possible.

Aside from our policy changes, we urge everyone to get vaccinated and mask in public.

19/06/2021

More exciting news on the subject of Group Classes!

In addition to Sunday mornings, we're now offering classes on three weekday nights: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 pm.

Use the link below to sign up!

Our group dog training classes have a customized, personal feel. We bring the quality of private training to a group environment.

10/06/2021

Group Classes have returned! We're thrilled to announce that our Group Classes are back in action. Our instructors are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and to keep everyone safe, we're using Excelsior Pass to verify the vaccination status of all class participants. Use the link below to get yours!

A link to our Group Class page where you can enroll is in the comments. We're still not enforcing any expiration dates regarding packages purchased, and we're very excited to welcome back all of our four- and two-legged friends!

Excelsior Pass provides a free, fast and secure way to present digital proof of COVID-19 vaccination or negative test results.

11/04/2021

We are continuing to monitor and analyze the COVID-19 risks to determine when it is safe to resume any in-person services. We set our criteria for resuming in-person Group Classes as Saratoga County not experiencing exponential spread. Although numbers were looking good in early November of 2020, holiday travel, increasingly pleasant weather, and vaccine euphoria appear to have had detrimental effects as Saratoga County is currently still experiencing a period of exponential spread.

We will continue our monitoring efforts and are hopeful that as more people are vaccinated that the spread will start to come under control. We will give updates here when available. We thank you for your patience while we do our best to keep your families and ours safe.

10/03/2021

Personally, I applaud this decision. Obviously we don't have all the details necessary to do a formal assessment in the case of Major Biden, but the Humane Hierarchy states that "health, nutrition, and environmental concerns" are the first consideration to make, and "antecedent arrangements" are the second consideration.

What we do know, is that Major has found some aspect of life in the White House stressful enough to result in a bite incident. Adding in the stress of a comprehensive behavior modification program (even one using positive associations and systematic desensitization and counter conditioning) is unnecessary in his case because a lower-stress environment lacking his triggers for undesired behavior is readily available.

The vast majority of our clients don't have this luxury, but POTUS does. We're happy to see that the solution being implemented takes Major's best interests into consideration.

President Biden's 3-year-old German shepherd, Major, was involved in an incident that ended in a minor injury to an individual, officials said Tuesday.

11/02/2021

These are all the same reasons we recommend leashes (even for our own dogs).

My dog answers to a higher power and cannot be governed by the restrictions of mortals and ninnies.

05/02/2021

New research continues to support eschewing punishment in dog training.

Dog training methods range broadly from those using mostly positive punishment and negative reinforcement (aversive-based) to those using primarily positive reinforcement (reward-based). Although aversive-based training has been strongly criticized for negatively affecting dog welfare, there is no c...