Companion Animal Psychology

Zazie and Kristi chat about how to groom cats, what to do with matted fur, trimming cats' nails, and how to give meds to cats. 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. Watch episode 12 of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation on Youtube or below, listen via your favourite podcast app or below, or scroll down to read some of the highlights. Husbandry for cats In this episode we chat about how to groom your cat and how to deal with mats, as well as how to trim your cat’s nails. We discuss the many reasons why it’s important not to “declaw” your cat and how it’s really like an amputation. Scratching is a natural behavior for cats and we talk about the kind of post to provide to keep your cat happy. We also discuss the tricky topic of how to give meds to your cats, including pilling, towel-wrapping, and tricks to make meds ea

“Teresa J. Rhyne is the best kind of person, a dog person. In this beautiful, honestly told memoir, she leads us through an adventure that will inspire any dog lover. A life-affirming read, or as any dog would say if they could speak, ‘a real treat!’" -- W. Bruce Cameron, #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestselling author of A Dog's Purpose. 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 the weekly Companion Animal Psychology newsletter. This month, the Animal Book Club is reading Poppy in the Wild: A Lost Dog, Fifteen Hundred Acres of Wilderness, and the Dogged Determination that Brought Her Home by Teresa J. Rhyne. From the publisher, "After losing her beloved beagle Daphne to lymphoma, author Teresa Rhyne launches herself into fostering other dogs in need, including Poppy, a small, frightened beagle rescued from the China dog meat trade. The elation of rescue quickly turns to

These signs of affectionate feline behaviour show that your cats are friends with each other. Photo: Fernando Calmon/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. If you have more than one cat , it helps a lot if they are good friends. Tension between cats can result in stress for them and perhaps also for you. But how do you know if they are friends? Here are the signs to look out for. They greet each other with the tail up . The tail up greeting is when one cat approaches the other with their tail straight up, often with a little hook at the end, a bit like a question mark. You might also see this when your cat approaches you. The tail up is a friendly signal.  These two cats are touching heads, bodies, and tails, and they're also showing the tail up signal. Photo: ClementineKANJ.  They sniff noses . Sniffing the nose is another way tha

Can you help Generation Pup get to 10,000 puppies? Photo: Lunja/Shutterstock Guest post by James Oxley Generation Pup is a longitudinal study, run by Dogs Trust , started in 2016. In 2023 the study recruited its 7,500th puppy onto the project. However, although the study has been a great success, we still require more puppies and their owners to take part in order for us to reach our 10,000-puppy target. Can you help? The data gathered from this work will be fundamental in understanding the development of health and behaviour problems in dogs over their lifetime. This is achieved by all our voluntary puppy owners who regularly complete online surveys about all aspects of their dog’s health, welfare and management.  There are also additional contributions which dedicated owners can decide to provide to the study, including the submission of hair, faecal, urine and buccal swabs from their dogs. This also builds a unique database of dog samples which will help in the understanding of dog

The importance of enrichment for cats, Sassafras Lowrey's latest books Claw This Journal and Jillian at the Junior Showcase , and tips for aspiring dog and cat writers. The latest episode of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation .  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. Watch episode 11 of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation   on Youtube or below, listen via your favourite podcast app or below, or scroll down to read the highlights. Enrichment for cats and tips for aspiring writers In this episode, we chat with dog trainer and author Sassafras Lowrey. We start with her latest book, Claw This Journal , which is full of fun activities to do with your cat. We learn about how Sassafras's cat Thing came into her life and why she wrote this book. We talk about enrichment for cats, and how it's important to tailor it for individual cats.  W

How to tell if your dog is a pessimist or optimist. Artwork: Sarah Alsmiller Guest post by Sky Sobol We all know people who are optimists. The glass is always half-full, and they see the bright side of everything. We also all know some pessimists — people that see  the glass half-empty and read doom and gloom into the most neutral events. In humans, it is easy to tell how optimistic someone is, but what about your dog? Does your dog see the food bowl half-empty or half-full? Fortunately, science can help answer this question.  In human psychology a person’s tendency towards optimism or pessimism is called judgment bias (Roelofs and van de Staay 2017).  Optimistic people have positive judgment bias and pessimistic people have negative judgment bias.  Optimism and pessimism are not fixed traits, and in humans, these traits shift based on positive and negative life experiences and reflect emotion (Schwaba et al 2019). The ability to measure someone’s judgment bias can give us a window in

It's best for your pet if you only use reward-based methods to train them. Here’s what that means. Photo: OlgaOvcharenko/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. Dog training methods can basically be divided into those that use fear and pain and those that don’t. Or aversive methods and reward-based ones. What do we mean when we talk about reward-based training methods? It's an important definition because there’s an ever-increasing body of research that tells us that we should use reward-based methods because aversive methods have risks to dogs’ welfare. Those risks include fear, anxiety, stress, aggression, stress-related illnesses, pessimism, and a worse relationship with the owner.  There are also some studies that suggest similar risks for cats. Many animal behaviour and welfare organizations recommend the use of reward-base