A recent scientific study determined why humans love dogs. They claimed it was that humans who make eye-contact have an edge. Apparently dogs tha
t gaze into a human’s eyes love them. To counter this finding I will tell you my rule, derived from eight years of humane and animal control work and more than 25 working as a behaviorist. I never make direct eye-contact with a dog I haven’t slept with. Continue reading
“Dualism is closely associated with the philosophy of René Descartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance. Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from the brain as the seat of intelligence. Hence, he was the first to formulate the mind–body problem in the form in which it exists today.” Wikipedia Continue reading
OK, so you want to be a great dog trainer. Believe it or not it starts with the most basic concepts. The problem is that most people don’t start at a foundation and then build on top of it. They start from a half-way point of hearsay from someone who is considered an expert, like me. As there is no shortage of experts the information is overwhelming and often contradictory. Eventually the person selects one or more experts and starts training. As a result of depending on hearsay, the beginner assumes that their existing level of skill is complete because they have memorized all the rules of the expert. The problem is that the beginner can’t know if there are glitches in their education. By accepting information on faith they may have wide gaps in their knowledge – gaps of ignorance. Then, one day, a problem arises that requires a fundamental solution they don’t know. The most common way to side-step this is to create a complex solution based on existing knowledge that doesn’t really solve the problem. That is the norm.
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I could have made this several thousand words long, but sometimes simply listing the logical points is a better way to illustrate a problem – like a blue-print rather than a pretty rendering. From my many years in and around this problem these are some logical points that any solution has to consider – in my opinion. Your perspective may differ. Continue reading
(Originally published in Pet Boarding and Daycare magazine)
Hans Christian Andersen once wrote a story about modern dog trai
ning, without even knowing it. The story is called, ‘The Princess and the Pea.” It seems that a prince wanted to find the perfect princess for a bride. He searched and searched but couldn’t find the perfect princess. One night, a great storm came. A bedraggled princess knocked on the town gate to seek shelter. (You really have to stretch to come up with that part of the story, but perhaps it was common in those days.) To test if the girl was really a princess, the queen stacked 20 mattresses on top of each other and put a pea under the bottom one. In the morning, the girl reported…
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