Companion Animal Psychology

The benefits of using food puzzle toys, how to choose them, and how to introduce them to your dog. A Corgi with a woolly snuffle mat. Photo: Jus_Ol/Shutterstock. By Zazie Todd, PhD Food puzzle toys are a great way to provide enrichment for your dog. If you want to get started—or add some different food toys to your dog’s repertoire—this guide will help. This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. The benefits of food puzzle toys for dogs Enrichment is important because a dog’s life can sometimes be a bit, well, boring. Dogs spend a lot of time lounging around waiting for us to have time to do something with them. Food puzzle toys are a great way to give your dog something to do and to make mealtime fun.  They can also slow down the speed at which your dog eats, which is useful if your dog is one of those who seems to inhale their food. From an animal welfare perspective food puzzle toys are great because they ...

Fear of predators, aging dogs, and blood transfusions for cats... the latest Companion Animal Psychology news. By Zazie Todd PhD My favourite pet posts from around the web This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. When snowshoe hares are surrounded by predators, what effect does chronic stress have on them—and what does it tells us about fear and trauma in people and other animals? Do wild animals get PTSD? Scientists probe its evolutionary roots by Sharon Levy (Knowable Magazine). How did the field of dog cognition research come about, and how can it help dogs? A thoughtful piece with comments from Alexandra Horowitz PhD and Brian Hare PhD. Thinking about how dogs think by Kim Kavin (Washington Post).  "One of the researchers' most important messages is that the way in which caregivers perceived the bond they had with their free-ranging dogs did not predict the dog's movements." Dog-human re...

A guide to the ways in which management can help with your pet’s behaviour issues—either on its own, or alongside training and behaviour modification. Management can stop your dog from taking food you don't want them to get. Photo: Jarib/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. Often when people seek help with their dog’s behaviour, they assume that training is the answer. But management can play an important role too.  With cats, people are much less likely to assume training will help. Fortunately, this is starting to change, because cats are very trainable too. But management can also help cats.  Here are three ways in which management can help with pet behaviour issues. Management keeps people and pets safe Management can be very important to keep your own pet safe, and sometimes to keep other people and pets safe too. Here are some examples. Management for pulling on l...

Clever Border Collies have their word learning skills tested in new research from the Genius Dog Challenge. Whisky, one of the dogs in the study. Photo: Helge O. Svela. By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you   Did you spend lockdown teaching your dog the names of all their toys? No? Well, you’re not alone. But a handful of Border Collie guardians has been busy teaching their very talented dogs the names of new toys, all in the name of science. The research from the Family Dog Project and the Dept. of Ethology at Eotvos Lorand University is published in Royal Society Open Science . It builds on a previous study that tested 34 regular pet dogs and 6 Border Collies who already knew quite a few words. Those results showed that after 3 months of training, only 1 of the regular pet dogs had been able to learn the names of two novel toys, but the six Border Collies had learned them—and more. The...

"A beautifully presented book with an evocative historical voice and great confidence and flair. It is also a lot of fun to read."--Neil Pemberton. 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 Dogopolis: How Dogs and Humans Made Modern New York, London, and Paris (Animal Lives) by Chris Pearson. From the back cover, "Dogopolis presents a surprising source for urban innovation in the history of three major cities: human-canine relationships. Stroll through any American or European city today and you probably won’t get far before seeing a dog being taken for a walk. It’s expected that these domesticated animals can easily navigate sidewalks, streets, and other foundational elements of our built environment. But what if our cities were actually shaped in response to dogs more than we ever realized?" This and all of the book choices (an...