Companion Animal Psychology

How to train your puppy, what to do about the zoomies, and house training... Common questions about caring for puppies answered by the experts. Photo: Photology1971/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd, PhD   This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. Puppies are so cute! It must be wonderful to have one, right? But it can also be exhausting. And the need to socialize your puppy can feel like a big responsibility. We know that once people have had a puppy before, they typically do a better job of the socialization and training. They’ve learned from their earlier experience. But what if this is the first time you’ve got a puppy? It's very common to have questions about the best things to do to socialize and train your puppy. And let's face it, even an experienced puppy guardian can have questions. I asked some of North America's top experts for their tips for new puppy parents. Check out these questions and answers

Trials, setbacks, and love are all part of our relationship with dogs and cats. Photo: Ermolaeva Olga 84/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. As I was driving home from the store today, I turned a corner and saw thunder clouds over home. “Poor Bodger,” I thought, before remembering that he isn’t here any more.  For those that don’t know, Bodger was terrified of thunder, but he passed last year. We don’t know yet if Pepper, my senior Shih Tzu, is frightened of thunder and lightning. Bodger was front of mind because I recently finished writing something about him and thunderstorms (you’ll have to wait a while to read it). I ended that piece by thinking about the progress we made with him over the years, slow but noticeable. And that set me thinking about all the increments and measurements that go with having a dog or a cat. For Harley, my tabby cat, the most important measurem

Misunderstanding dogs, where a cat's butt goes, puppies, and teenagers... 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. “Rather than requiring human owners to change their lives to accommodate a new dog, the French bulldog is a breed that’s been broken to accommodate us.” The very cute, totally disturbing tale, of the American ‘It’ dog by Tove K Danovich.  “Sometimes reframing how someone is describing their dog's behavior and the context in which it's occurring is enough to change and correct their perspective and understanding of what's happening.” The perils of mis-labelling dog-appropriate behavior by Dr. Marc Bekoff and Mary Angilly.  "The puppy period is such a fleeting part of your dog's life." Puppy priorities: What really matters in the first few weeks by Vanessa Charbonneau. “One of

Will cats choose to sit in an imaginary box? A grey cat called Ash sits in a Kanizsa square. Photo: Tara McCready By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. In the dark pandemic days of last summer, scientists had a fun project for people and their cats. The study takes the “If I fits, I sits” phenomenon one step further to tell us that cats are susceptible to a visual illusion called the Kanizsa square. We all know that cats like boxes. In #IfIfitsIsits, people share photos of their cat inside a box. And in #CatSquare, they tape the outline of a square on the floor to see if their cat will sit in it. Often, they do.  If I fits, I sits. Photo: Nataliya Kuznetsova/Shutterstock But what if the square is imaginary? The Kanizsa triangle is a famous illusion in which we see a triangle even though it isn’t there. We subjectively perceive a contour despite there being no change in colour or in luminance

The risk factors for dogs being aggressive towards people include being fearful, older, small, and someone’s first dog, new research shows.  Photo: Bianca Ackermann/Unsplash By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. When you can persuade a lot of dog guardians to complete a questionnaire, you can answer some really interesting questions about dog behaviour. Like, what factors are associated with dogs being aggressive towards people? New research in Scientific Reports looks at just this question. The results come from a large subsample (more than 9,000) of questionnaire results from a total sample of 13,700 dogs. The overall research has already looked at the factors associated with social fear (e.g. of strangers and other dogs) and non-social fear in dogs , both of which I previously reported on. Now, the scientists have turned their attention to aggression.   For this study, aggression was def

 "Answers every question imaginable for the new cat owner."--New York Times Book Review. 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's choice for the Animal Book Club is CatWise: America's Favorite Cat Expert Answers Your Cat Behavior Questions by Pam Johnson-Bennett. From the back cover, "Top feline behavior expert (and author of Penguin's bestselling Think Like a Cat and Cat vs. Cat) answers the 150 questions most often asked by puzzled cat owners. "Even those of us who have lived with and loved our cats for decades are constantly stymied by their seemingly inexplicable acts, or have questions about why they do what they do and where they do it, and how we can get them to not do it. Here, in one complete authoritative guide, those elusive mysteries are solved. Why does my cat lick my hair? Why does the cat only want attention when I'm on the phone?