Companion Animal Psychology

Not “Sit, Sit, Sit” but “Rewards are the best way to train your dog…” Phot: Medenka Nera/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 you ever feel like you are saying the same thing over and over again? Do you ever think about whether or not it’s useful? I’m not talking about those times when you see someone repeating a cue to their dog over and over while the dog keeps on doing something else. That’s not a good idea because the dog is simply learning to ignore you. (Instead, say the cue like “Sit” once, then wait, and the instant your dog sits give them a tasty treat as a reward). I’m talking about training methods. Repetition on dog training methods It’s important to use reward-based methods to train your dog because there are risks to aversive methods ( positive punishment and negative reinforcement ). Plus, reward-based training can be a fun enrichment activity that improves yo...

Training your dog to search for a scent isn't as hard as you might think—and it's great enrichment for your dog. Photo: Barb Elkin/Shutterstock By Izzy Swanston, Sienna Taylor, and Ben Brilot This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. There’s no doubt that dogs have amazing noses. For example, dogs have 300 million scent receptors compared to our measly 5 million (Else, 2020) and possess the ability to detect odours at concentrations of up to 500 parts-per-trillion (Johnson, 1999)—the equivalent of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic sized swimming pools of water.  We use dogs’ noses as biosensors for the detection of all sorts of things: explosives, bodies, drugs, cancers (Beebe, Howell and Bennett, 2016) and cryptic wildlife and/or their faeces (Karp, 2020). But the more we learn to understand our dog’s needs, the more scent work is being used not just for our benefit but also as a form of enrichment to b...

“Equal parts science and doggy diary, [The Year of the Puppy] charts how our irresistible fur babies develop personality.”—People.  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 The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves by Alexandra Horowitz. From the publisher, “Few of us meet our dogs at Day One. The dog who will, eventually, become an integral part of our family, our constant companion and best friend, is born without us into a family of her own. A puppy's critical early development into the dog we come to know is usually missed entirely. Dog researcher Alexandra Horowitz aimed to change that with her family's new pup, Quiddity (Quid). In this scientific memoir, she charts Quid's growth from wee grub to boisterous sprite, from her birth to her first birthday. Horowitz follows Quid's first weeks with her mother and ten roly-poly l...

When people follow out-dated advice and fail to recognize signs of resource guarding in dogs, it's a recipe for trouble. Here's what to look out for--and what to do about it.  Photo: Mart Production/Pexels By Zazie Todd PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. Learning to read a dog’s body language is a skill. Many people find it difficult to identify signs of fear, but are much better at recognizing when a dog is happy (Wan et al 2012). People with more experience with dogs are better at spotting the signs of fear . We know that it’s fairly common for people to miss signs of fear in their dog, even in situations where they know that many dogs are fearful, such as at the vet or when hearing fireworks (Mariti et al 2015; Blackwell et al 2013). What about spotting the signs of resource guarding?  What is resource guarding in dogs? Resource guarding is a relatively common behaviour issue in dogs. Resour...

I spoke about cats with Jim Mora for Radio New Zealand's Sunday Morning --and then came back to answer listeners' questions.  Photo: Toma Stepunina/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. Recently, I chatted all about cats with Jim Mora for Radio New Zealand's Sunday Morning . We talked about my book Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy , and the advice it has for all cat guardians, even the most experienced ones. You can listen to that interview here: Dr. Zazie Todd - Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy . Then, many people wrote in with questions about their cats. So we recorded another interview in which I answered some of those questions (we didn't manage to fit them all in).  You can listen to the second interview here: Dr. Zazie Todd - More ways to make your cat happy . Happy listening! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. As an...

On September 24th, I'll be presenting a live workshop on happy pets for the IAABC Foundation. By Zazie Todd PhD There are just a few days left to get your ticket to the upcoming event, Making Pets Happy: The Role of Positive Experiences in Good Animal Welfare. Whether you are more of a dog or cat person, this event will help you learn more about what pets need in order to be happy, and how thinking about their welfare can help to prevent and resolve behaviour issues. It's on Saturday 24th September from 1.00 - 4.10pm Pacific time, and it's a LIVE event with plenty of discussion time included. If you can't attend live, you'll get access to the recording for 12 months. CEUs are available and you can get more information and register on the IAABC Foundation website . 

I've got a new post on my Psych Today blog, Fellow Creatures , which takes a look at the positive side of the pet-guardian relationship. Photo: Valeria Boltneva/Pexels By Zazie Todd PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. The post is in response to one by Dr. Marc Bekoff ( "Are you being fair to right-minded dog owners?" ) in which he writes about some comments he got from readers, and analyzes posts by himself and other Psych Today bloggers (including me!) to see if they tend towards the more negative or more positive end of things. Because of that, I decided to take a look at 3 things that dog and cat guardians get right .  Dr. Bekoff's post also prompted me to look at some of my own posts, because I try hard to write positive posts most of the time, I had just written one that could be classed as more negative, and which is already one of my most-viewed posts on Psych Today . Maybe thi...