While I was working on this podcast my wood-guy, Steve, delivered four cords of wood. As usual we caught up on that we’d been doing in the last year and while we talked his old dog wandered around the yard claiming it as her own. Because she outweighs my dogs by a good 50 pounds and doesn’t like other dogs, naturally I didn’t let my dogs out to greet the visitors. But neither did I move the deacon’s bench that doubles as a perfect observation point for small dogs before the wood arrived. (See below) As expected, the result
Read more →Will all of you who can swear on a stack of religious texts or something else you value that your relationship with others—including your animals and clients or any trainer or behavioral consultant of any persuasion with whom you work—is really all positive all of the time, please raise your hand? Naturally I can’t see any of you, but I think it’s safe to say that there are darn few hands going up out in the cybersphere. The reality is that the all-positive terminology reflects a state of perfection that, while a laudable goal, may damage more than enhance some
Read more →Did you ever experience what superficially seem like a series of unrelated events that later turned out to be related? That’s what happened to me when I was reading Trash Animals: How we live with nature’s filthy, feral, invasive and Unwanted Species edited by Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II , the book mentioned in this podcast. So often we view using food as evidence of an advanced form of human-animal interaction when in reality it’s probably been the primary form of exerting power over animals (including members of our own species) for thousands of years. While we
Read more →As you listen this podcast, ask yourself if you would have had the courage and the faith in your animal and yourself to do what my friend did. Or would you give in to fear and all its negative effects?
Read more →The problem-oriented approach always has played a key role in science where it typically yields a tiny glimpse of a larger picture. Think of the results of an individual study as a single piece in a more complex mosaic. Like all other living beings, we humans are hardwired to get what we want using the least amount of energy. Relative to our higher intellectual pursuits, this means we like to be right because that means we don’t need to change anything. Another nice thing about focusing on the results of individual studies instead of taking a broader view is
Read more →In last month’s commentary I wrote about the common belief that post-natal care fulfilled only physical needs, primarily those for food and warmth. Shortly after I uploaded that podcast I saw this news clip about a neonatal puppy who was rescued who wasn’t.
Read more →Another thought struck me when I was editing this is whether the same phenomenon described in this podcast makes it so much easier at this time of year for some people to assume that young of multiple wild and domestic species need human care.
Read more →What can I say? I’m one of those people who consider bees fascinating creatures. Because of this, I took it very personally when multiple factors, some of which were of human origin, resulted in the disappearance of the honey bees from my gardens. But when I read about the research conducted by Aurore Avargues-Weber and Martin Giunfar, the subject of this week’s podcast, I felt much better.
Read more →This podcast describes a study, the results of which may strike some of you as so obvious that you wonder why it needed to be done, and hit others (like me) who will be surprised. But regardless what you may think about dogs possessing this particular recognition skill, it seems to me that who or what dogs can recognize in what form depends on what they learn from those around them, just like kids. I suspect that both of my dogs would flunk this particular test because dog breed names usually don’t occur in my conversation with them. It’s
Read more →No one needs to worry about me expanding my treatment protocol to include tango lessons. However, I don’t rule out its benefit for those who are intrigued by the dance or any dance requiring the partners to learn to read each other’s body language and appreciate each other’s perspective who can find an instructor as capable as my client’s. But for those who lack patience for this, there’s nothing quite like working with a horse, cow, or other animal big enough to kill you to learn appreciate human-animal interactions from the animal’s perspective. Such creatures have made instant believers
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