Companion Animal Psychology

My latest piece at my Psychology Today blog, Fellow Creatures, is up and it looks at the role of the writer when it comes to dog training and animal behaviour. By Zazie Todd PhD It was inspired by listening to a talk between two writers, Amin Maalouf and Marina Warner, and in particular what Maalouf said about the importance of lucidity and hope. Check out the post here: finding hope in dog training and animal behaviour . Photo: Lum3n/Pexels.

Celebrating nine years of blogging about cats and dogs.  Photo: Rodica Vasiliev/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd, PhD Today, Companion Animal Psychology is 9 years old. That’s 9 years of blogging about science and our pets, and the best ways to take care of cats and dogs.  In fact, this is the 643rd post. The most popular post of the last year has been if your dog is afraid, avoid these two mistakes .   A ninth anniversary is traditionally a willow or pottery anniversary, or these days leather is also considered as a gift to represent a ninth anniversary. But if you'd like to support Companion Animal Psychology, you can buy me a coffee.  Nine years is a long time in blogging. I feel like it should be dog years, which would make it equivalent to 52 or something. Writing blogs is a tough thing to keep going, especially against the constantly-changing landscape of google updates, social media algorithms, and life in a pandemic.  So I’m very proud to have kept Compan...

Trina Moyles on her canine friend and protector, Holly, and her latest book, Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest . No. 14 in the series The Writer's Pet by Zazie Todd PhD . This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. Trina Moyles is a writer and Lookout Observer who spends her summers perched up a tower watching the boreal forest in Alberta for wildfires, with only her dog Holly for company. In Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest Moyles writes of finding herself in the wilderness and her increasing awareness of the effects of climate change on the forest. Eva Holland, author of Nerve , says “Trina Moyles has written a beautiful, closely observed love letter to the boreal forest and the wilderness of northern Canada at a time when it is threatened by unprecedented change. But Lookout is more than that: it's also a powerful, unforgettab...

I have a new post at my Psychology Today blog, Fellow Creatures, that looks at some research on the factors that affect people's decision to surrender pets to the BC SPCA. Photo: Justin Veeneema/Unsplash By Zazie Todd PhD The research, published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, looks at the reasons people give when they surrender pets to different BC SPCA shelters, and compares this to a measure of social deprivation called the Canadian Index of Multiple Deprivation. They also look in particular at similarities and differences between Metro Vancouver and Kamloops, a smaller city in south-central BC. The results will help in the planning of programs to support animal welfare. Check out the post here: How human vulnerability influences the surrender of pets . 

Family portraits with pets, tips for caring for kittens, wool dogs in BC, and more... This month's Companion Animal Psychology News. By Zazie Todd, PhD My favourites this month This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. “We're in an age where a plethora of knowledge is available at our fingertips and immediate gratification abounds for everything, and we often want firm answers for our questions.” Dog training: blending science with individual personalities by Dr. Marc Bekoff and Mary Angilly   “I also was astounded to learn how popular bioRxiv has come to be.” A great explainer on preprints from Dr. Marc Bekoff.   “Puppies have a short window in their early lives in which they are impressionable - they soak up different situations and experiences at a faster, more sponge-like rate than if they are exposed to these later in life.”  The social imperative of socialization by Dr. Maria Karunu...

Every dog is an individual, but dog training is more efficient when there’s a recipe to follow. Photo: Helen Hotson/Shutterstock By Kristi Benson CTC PCBC-A, Special Correspondent My grandma was one half of a farm couple who got married just after the Great Depression ended, starting a family on a small spread on the Canadian prairies. My memories of her are almost all tied up with sharing food as an extended family. We would pile into our station wagon and take the half-hour drive from our small, wide-road prairie town, to her small, wide-road prairie town. The incessant wind grabbed the car doors as we flung them open almost before the car had coasted to a stop in her narrow driveway, so eager were we to see if our cousins had arrived.  Grandma was usually in the kitchen, wearing an apron, overseeing the creation of the meal (an operation that I now understand was as complex as a minor military endeavour, perhaps say WWII). There was roast chicken, there was stuffing, there were ...

 Jen Sookfong Lee on her adorable dog, her new children’s book, and her first poetry collection. Rosie McDoggle. Photo: Jen Sookfong Lee. No. 13 in the series The Writer's Pet by Zazie Todd PhD . This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you   Jen Sookfong Lee is a Canadian writer whose work spans many genres. Well known for the fine storytelling of her Chinatown trilogy ( The End of East , The Better Mother , and The Conjoined ), this year she has not one but two books coming out. Finding Home: The Journey of Immigrants and Refugees is a children’s nonfiction book that tells the story of how immigrants and refugees have shaped the world. She shares her own experiences as the child of immigrants as well as first-hand accounts of people who have moved to another country and why. This accessible guide to emigration is aimed at 8-12 year olds. And in April, Lee’s first book of poetry, The Shadow List , will be ...

Reflections on the publication of Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy, one year on. Dixie and Hamish with Wag. Photo: Bonnie Hartney, Ocean Park Dog Training . By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. It’s exactly one year since the publication of my book Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy . And it’s been a year like no other for so many reasons. I thought I’d share a few reflections on what this time has been like as a debut author. Against the backdrop of everything else that’s been going on, I know that I’ve been very lucky. This time a year ago, I was booked to go to Toronto for a big TV show, and worrying about whether it would be safe to go (of course I didn’t go). The situation was changing every day. People emailed me because they wanted my book, but bookstores were closed and Amazon wasn’t shipping books. But in the grand scheme of things, these were small concerns. One thi...

“Poignant, thoughtful, and sometimes heartbreaking. King once again elevates the discussion of animal emotion. She tackles a tricky subject with a scientist's care and an animal lover's grace.”-- Jennifer Holland. By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. This month, the Animal Book Club  is reading How Animals Grieve by Barbara J. King. From the back cover, "From the time of our earliest childhood encounters with animals, we casually ascribe familiar emotions to them. But scientists have long cautioned against such anthropomorphizing, arguing that it limits our ability to truly comprehend the lives of other creatures. Recently, however, things have begun to shift in the other direction, and anthropologist Barbara J. King is at the forefront of that movement, arguing strenuously that we can—and should—attend to animal emotions. With How Animals Grieve, she draws our attention to the...

A new book uses powerful stories and photographs to show the difference dogs make to people with HIV.  Adam and Laila, from the book When Dogs Heal. Photo: Jesse Freidin. By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you   Through stunning portraits and moving stories, When Dogs Heal: Powerful Stories of People Living with HIV and the Dogs That Saved Them shares the joy of people’s relationship with their dog and how it helps with the challenges of living with a diagnosis of HIV. The book features interviews about how loving a dog has helped people learn to cope with stigma and to love themselves, alongside beautiful photos of those interviewed and their dog. I spoke to two of the authors, photographer Jesse Freidin and Dr. Robert Garofalo, about the idea for the book and how it all came together.  Zazie: How did the book come about? Jesse: I met Rob almost a decade ago when he commissione...