Companion Animal Psychology

A comparison with village dogs highlights some of the ways that pet dogs’ lives could be improved. Photo: Lim Tiaw Leong/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. Do pet dogs have it all? They get to lounge about for most of the day, their meals are provided for them, and they can have endless pets from their humans. But are there ways that we could improve the welfare of pet dogs ?    A team of scientists has investigated this question by comparing pet dogs to village dogs in a paper in press in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. After all, dogs existed as village dogs for centuries before any pet dogs came along, so the researchers say “the comparison may serve as a good basis for assessing the effects of the ‘petification’ of dogs.”  Dr. Iben Meyer and Prof. Peter Sandøe (Dept of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen), two of the authors of the pape...

The Pawsitive Post in Conversation with Zazie Todd and Kristi Benson making some truth sandwiches about cats and dogs. Zazie Todd and Kristi Benson of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation .  By Zazie Todd PhD This time we talk about countering misinformation about dogs and cats with truth sandwiches. We run through some myths about dog training and cat behaviour, talk about why they are wrong, and figure out some truth sandwiches to help correct the misinformation.  We consider:  why it’s wrong to take a dominance approach to dog training why we should use positive reinforcement rather than punishment in dog training the myth that dogs should just fit into our lives and why cats need to scratch. We also talk about the (then) upcoming Management Month at the Academy for Dog Trainers, which is all about celebrating how you can sometimes use management instead of training to solve dog behaviour issues. As part of Companion Animal Psychology ’s tenth anniversary celebrations, y...

 I wrote a guest post for the Academy for Dog Trainers about the magic of management in dog training. By Zazie Todd PhD The post rounds up the Academy's March is Management Month which looked at all aspects of management in dog training. You'll find some outstanding writing and tons of practical tips in the posts, which are all linked to in this piece (including one very special management win).  You can read the post here: The magic of management in dog training .  Thank you to the Academy for Dog Trainers for this opportunity!

A dog trainer’s reflections on acceptance, cultural change, and letting dogs be dogs. #CAP10 Photo: thka/Shutterstock By Kristi Benson Special Correspondent I had folded myself into the worn fabric of the backseat of our family’s sedan, my school backpack resting heavily against my shin, when I first learned that it was prudent to seal pieces of myself into little boxes. I was homely and knobbly and years from the realization that everyone is, at that age. In the front seat, the conversation was of the patently boring adult-stuff variety and it washed, mostly, over me, as I let myself slip into the hazy state born from the hum of worn tires nibbling away at the familiar and flat small-town prairie streets, the cartographic circulatory system of my childhood. Then, something broke through. “I’d like to write a letter to the Calgary Herald saying that all homosexuals should be castrated.”  I don’t remember the imagined infraction that some gay man had committed to earn him and all h...

Your invitation to join The Purr Party with behind-the-scenes access to my book launch. By Zazie Todd PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. I am only a few weeks away from the launch of my book, Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy .  Purr is my second book and as you might have noticed, I am very excited about it! I hope it will help a lot of people have happier cats.  For me, one of the most fun parts of the process of publishing my first book, Wag , was the launch team. I really enjoyed chatting with people on the team and seeing photos of their adorable dogs with the book. I will forever be grateful to everyone on the team who helped me launch Wag into the world. And so I’m going to run a similar team for Purr —The Purr Party. Would you like to be one of the special people who is part of the book launch? I am recruiting people to help me with the launch of  Purr: The Science of Mak...

The most popular posts about dog and cat behaviour from ten years of Companion Animal Psychology . #CAP10 Photo: xkunclova/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd PhD A number of people have asked me which posts have been the most popular on Companion Animal Psychology over the years. So I decided to put together a list. In a way though, it’s not an easy question. Sometimes a post that was very popular when it was first published subsequently gets few additional reads—and other times one of those posts just keeps on going and going… So I’ve put together two lists of Companion Animal Psychology posts. The first looks at which post was the most popular in a particular year of the blog. The other looks at the posts that have been the most popular overall, in terms of total page views since the post was published. There is some overlap between these lists, but not that much. This makes sense because a post that is topical when it's published is not necessarily going to stay so as time goes by. Me...

The Pawsitive Post in Conversation with special guest Jean Donaldson as part of Companion Animal Psychology ’s tenth anniversary celebrations. #CAP10 By Zazie Todd PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. Over the last ten years since I started writing Companion Animal Psychology , there have been a lot of positive changes for companion animals. There’s a better understanding of animal welfare, the benefits of reward-based training methods, and of enrichment for pets. But there’s still a lot that could be better for our dogs and cats. As part of Companion Animal Psychology ’s tenth anniversary celebrations, Kristi Benson (Special Correspondent) and I recorded a special issue of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation with special guest Jean Donaldson. You can watch this below or on Youtube , listen via your favourite podcast app or below.  If you like it, be sure to subscribe to my channel on Youtube, where y...

“I dare you to read this book and tell me that racial justice isn’t important in animal advocacy.” -- Dolores Huerta. 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 Antiracism in Animal Advocacy: Igniting Cultural Transformation edited by Jasmin Singer, Aryenish Birdie, and Michelle Rojas-Soto. From the publisher: "Antiracism in Animal Advocacy: Igniting Cultural Transformation is a collection of writings by farmed animal protection advocates who are committed to exploring and prioritizing racial equity as they work to create a more just animal protection movement. The essayists, whose work was originally published in Sentient Media, and is reprinted with their permission, were all attendees of Encompass’s 2020 Racial Equity Institutes. Essays include:     “From Speaking Up for Animals to Becoming an Antiracist,” by Rachel Huff-Wagenborg   ...