Companion Animal Psychology

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...

“The Last Walk is a book that all loving pet owners should read. Nothing will make the prospect of ending a good friend’s life any easier, but at least it can help those awful decisions feel less of a stab in the dark.”― New Scientist. 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 Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives by Jessica Pierce. From the publisher, "From the moment when we first open our homes—and our hearts—to a new pet, we know that one day we will have to watch this beloved animal age and die. The pain of that eventual separation is the cruel corollary to the love we share with them, and most of us deal with it by simply ignoring its inevitability. With The Last Walk, Jessica Pierce makes a forceful case that our pets, and the love we bear them, deserve better. Drawing on the moving story of the last year of the l...

The Pawsitive Post in Conversation with special guest Erica Beckwith of A Matter of Manners Dog Training. By Zazie Todd PhD Teaching tricks to your dog is fun and cute, and a great way to improve the human-animal bond. Plus, you get to show off how adorable your pet is. This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. Watch Episode 6 of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation on Youtube or below.  Please subscribe to Companion Animal Psychology's Youtube channel to make sure you don't miss future videos. Training Tricks with Your Dog (and Cat) Erica Beckwith is the talented tricks trainer behind A Matter of Manners Dog Training , where she does behaviour consults for dogs and cats and runs online classes to teach a variety of tricks including peekaboo, sit pretty, chorus line kicks, and how to take a selfie with your dog.  Kristi Benson and I spoke to Erica about why she loves teaching tricks, where she finds the mot...

Can you recognize these reward-based dog training books by the colours used on their covers? By Zazie Todd PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. If you're like me, you've read a lot of dog books over the years. Even if you haven't, many dog guardians rely on some of the classic books to get information about dog training. So most people are familiar with at least some dog training books. But can you spot these popular books by the colours used on their cover? I got this idea from a post on Book Riot that asked if you can guess a classic book by its colour palette . But in this case, I'm sticking to dog training books.   I've turned the books' colour palette into stripes. There's a hint of the book covers peeking out from behind the stripes to give you a clue, but I've blocked out most of each cover. Some of the books have several different covers, depending on the edition, i...