Companion Animal Psychology

Women in canine science, people who care for parrots, dogs in Paris, and more... the latest news from Companion Animal Psychology. By Zazie Todd, PhD Some of my favourites from around the web this month This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. "Clearly - dogs are awesome. So is science!"  Women are thriving in canine science - tell a girl you know!  At Do You Believe in Dog?, Mia Cobb and Julie Hecht are celebrating the women in canine science, and encouraging girls to get interested in a career in science. Don't miss the daily inspiring quotes on their Facebook and Twitter feeds. “...it is the only study I know of which has demonstrated that petting and playing with a therapy dog can reduce human distress even when the interactions are not facilitated by a sympathetic handler” How important is the animal in animal-assisted therapy? Hal Herzog on an important new study that tests the

Find out which rewards dogs will run faster for, and why you need to use good treats in dog training. Photo: Dora Zett / 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. Modern dog trainers use positive reinforcement to train dogs, and that reinforcement often takes the form of food (see the ultimate dog training tip  to find out why). When you want a dog to come when you call them, you want to use your best training treats as a reward. But scientists have paid surprisingly little attention to what dogs consider worth working for – until now. A recent paper by Dr. Stefanie Riemer et al, published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science , looks at the relative effectiveness of quality and quantity of reinforcement as measured by how fast dogs run to the bowl they can eat it from. Pet dogs were trained to run along a walkway that was 20 metres long in order

Great books about animals, discussed amongst friends… The Companion Animal Psychology Book  Club is two years old. 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 Companion Animal Psychology Book Club is two years old. I started the book club in November 2016, intending it to be a small group. Within a couple of days several hundred people had joined and I stopped accepting new members because I did not want the group to get too big. The first book was The Trainable Cat by John Bradshaw and Sarah Ellis, which remains one of my favourites of all the ones we’ve read. Other personal favourites include Being a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz, How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) by Lee Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut, and Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Herzog. I was also pleased to re-read Plenty in Life Is Free by Kathy Sdao with the book club. But it's really

The best way to feed cats has changed. Instead of leaving kibble in a bowl, here’s what you should do now. Photo: Africa  Studio / 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. It used to be simple: put kibble in a bowl and leave it out all day. But that’s not how we should be feeding our pet cats . A new consensus statement from the American Association of Feline Practitioners explains the way we feed cats now. The AAFP says are several reasons to think more carefully about how you feed your cat. One is the increase in overweight and obesity in pet cats, which is bad for their health (see: how to help a fat cat lose weight ). Another reason is that using food puzzles for cats is a great enrichment activity that engages cats’ hunting instincts. This is especially important now that most pet cats are kept indoors for a lot or all of the time. As well, having the right

"The most scientifically important dog in over a century." —Brian Hare. 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 Companion Animal Psychology Book Club choice for November 2018 is Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words by John W. Pilley with Hilary Hinzmann. From the back cover,  "Chaser has fascinated dog lovers and scientists alike. Her story reveals the potential for taking out dialogue with dogs well beyond "fetch." When retired psychology professor John Pilley first got his new Border collie puppy, Chaser, he wanted to explore the boundaries of language learning and communication between humans and man's best friend. Exhibiting intelligence previously thought impossible in dogs, Chaser soon learned the names of more than a thousand toys and sentences with multiple elements of grammar. Chaser's accomplishmen

Synthetic cat-appeasing pheromones (Feliway Multicat) can help with aggression between cats that live together, according to this research. Photo: Samarsky / 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. Get Companion Animal Psychology in your inbox. Cat owners know only too well that cats can be choosy. As solitary hunters, the domestic cat can do just fine alone and does not have to be friends with other members of the species. On the other hand, cats can live in social groups, especially in colonies of female cats and their offspring, when female cats will help care for each other’s young. Many people have multiple pet cats and they aren’t always friends. It is obvious cats don’t get along if they fight. But there are also more subtle signs of cat aggression, such as when one cat blocks another cat’s access to a resource like the litter box. As well as bouts of aggression,

The latest news including an evidence-based guide to pets, what it's like growing up with wolves, and anxiety in pets and us. By Zazie Todd, PhD Some of my favourites from around the web this month This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. The Psychologist guide to … pets . I love these evidence-based tips on pets put together by Ella Rhodes . “Fido” or “Freddie”? Why do some pet names become popular? A fun and interesting post from Prof. Hal Herzog , complete with a quiz to test how popular your dogs’ names are. Do you want to know what the umwelt of a dog is? And what canine science experiments look like? The Scientist Podcast interviews Dr. Alexandra Horowitz .  “Treating my cat for depression caused me to question the state of anxiety in animals and us.” Can a cat have an existential crisis?  by Britt Peterson . Secrets of getting pee and poop samples from Fear Free . A tricky thing tha