By Lynn – My friend and her fiance wanted to have a child of the four-legged variety, and they are both at a point where a dog is within their means and time schedule. They were looking for something that would be a good apartment dog, shedding optional, and obviously temperament was a plus. He …
Please Stop Making Excuses – Part III – Adoption Read More »
By Lynn – At my vet tech school, we are (in my not-so-humble opinion) learning how to be “humane” and “nonconfrontational” by using — what else? — the Gentle “‘Tis truly cruel to correct the dog so we’ll just pull on it’s face while it pulls back” Leader on dogs who really don’t care about …
By Lynn – In the past two weeks, I’ve been subjected to and heard from others various excuses about dogs. They are pretty much nicely summed up in 3 categories: training, school and acquisition. I’ll post all categories in separate blogs and update as necessary. The first, training, came to me from a fellow blogger …
Please Stop Making Excuses – Part I – General Training Read More »
By Lynn – Oh, the things I shouldn’t run into on the internet. Even a discussion between radical pure-positive trainers versus the likes of Lou Castle and Denis Carthy sounds more intelligent than this. At least things like that still leave us a choice in which direction to go. Same church, different pew… Behold the Apocalypse. …
By Lynn – Once upon a time, we had a dog who had food sensitivities. About halfway through his life, we finally made the switch to a kibble with a novel protein source and had minimal problem after that. What he could eat and chew on were limited, so as he was the family pet, …
By Lynn – Another bullet in the Animal Behavior section of my $88 monster of a textbook admonishes us to “Avoid trainers who object to using food as a training reward. Food is an acceptable positive reinforcement training tool.” AHA, yes indeed it is acceptable. This doesn’t mean it is required. The use of food …
By Lynn – I know I’ve quoted it before, but I need to say it again just so everyone knows where I’m coming from. Remember that scene in Miss Congeniality when Gracie has her interview with the other finalists? She does a great job and then adds in her own addendum after the applause. Gracie’s …
By Lynn – I’ve noticed a phenomenon that I don’t think is new, but it definitely becoming more prevalent. I first thought about it when I started reading about these new halter things for dogs and how they were much more painless, funfun, etc…and I thought “Oh, OK” and moved on. It wasn’t until I …
By Lynn – In light of the fact that Australia has been a bit wonky with its views of such training collars as the pinch and the remote, here are a few links containing information about bans, laws, and where to find products within the country (since apparently the RSPCA is banning imports in some …
By Lynn – This is v2.0. I personally liked v1.0 better, but since it got eaten in the teh intertubes, I had to retype it. Same basic message, same snark, just…not as good. Enjoy anyway. In reading through Suzanne Clothier’s book, she has a few pages deicated to the concept of a dog pulling its …