DOG TRAINING AND BEHAVIOR

Heres the thing, says Nicholas Dodman, BVMS, DACVB, Director of the Tufts Animal Behavior Clinic. For the majority of dogs, especially young, fit, athletic breeds, walking them only on a lead is not sufficient. They need real exercise. They need to run, and they need to run off leash. Theyre bred for it. Its chapter 1 of dog ownership. I used to take my 84-year-old mother for a one-mile walk, and neither of us…

Deborah Betson of Aurora, Colorado, has a situation. Her mixed-breed dog, Camo, has begun to growl when she tries to move any of his toys or his dog bed. She cant even move his possessions around in order to clean. She adopted Camo only recently from a Colorado correction system program that takes dogs from various shelters and gives them to prisoners to train, and the first couple of months went beautifully. In fact, Camo is…

No matter how assiduously you work to train your new puppy to relieve herself outdoors, shes going to have accidents. Thats true even if you follow all the rules: taking her out seven to eight times a day in the beginning, putting her in her crate when she doesnt go and leaving her there for 15 minutes until she builds up the urge, designating an elimination spot near the house, praising her to the hilt…

Sniffing the butts of other dogs, sniffing the groins of other people, going nuts when the mailman comes, day after day - these are just some of the behaviors your dog might engage in that you find embarrassing, annoying, or perhaps just plain weird. But one species weirdness is anothers perfectly normal way of getting on in the world. Herein, to bridge the gap between what they do and what you perceive as out-there…

"Dogs who enjoy each other's company can engage in a lot of rough and tumble interaction, and it can look pretty scary," says Tufts...

Frightened dogs, like frightened people, are at risk of generalizing their fears. That is to say, they may become profilers, says Tufts Animal Behavior Clinic veterinarian Stephanie Borns-Weil, DVM. For example, lets say a dog had a bad experience with a golden retriever when he was a young puppy. The retriever tackled him and rolled him over - maybe the retriever was even trying to initiate play - but it really frightened him. From…

Dr. Dodman is not a big fan of teaching a dog by delivering a painful jolt of electricity to his neck. He has seen trainers drag dogs across the line with the gizmo set very high to deliver an excruciatingly hurtful nugget of power in order for them to learn. But, he acknowledges, the downside of a dogs not being contained can be pretty serious, with cataclysmic and even fatal injury possible. So I get it that people say, Whats the big deal about a shock with all thats at stake? But there are caveats.

I was at a meeting recently speaking to almost 200 dog aficionados, says Nicholas Dodman, BVMS, who heads the Behavior Clinic at the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. The room was filled with professionals - trainers, groomers, veterinarians - and a fellow speaker asked of the audience, How many of you have your dog in the bedroom? …

Some people let their dogs into bed with them when theyre still puppies but dont want to go the dogs whole life as bed partners. Thats okay. It doesnt make you a bad owner. But if youre going to get your dog out of your bed, do it cold turkey. If you try to accomplish it by degrees - one night in the bed, one night out of the bed - your dog will not…

The dog jumps on guests Q Our three-year-old golden retriever is lively and often hard to control despite the fact that she has been through two obedience classes. Our main problem is that she jumps on people. Every single time we have company, she jumps on them, and this is very problematic. What can we do? …

On the face of it, it sounds like the most unique canine behavior in the world. A dog starts licking the air out of nowhere, or carrying an object in his mouth while whimpering the whole time. Or maybe he begins carrying food from one room to another before he eats it, or falling to the floor and flopping around like a just-caught fish thrown to the bottom of the boat. Guess what? If your dog does it, chances are others do as well.

At first blush the behavior looks vindictive. A four-year-old terrier/shih tzu mix named Tootsie is perfectly housetrained as long as her family is home. But she relieves herself all over the place when theyre not there, leading perhaps to the perfectly reasonable assumption that she is paying them back for leaving her. But wait. Tootsies stubborn-seeming behavior gets worse.