Dogs are placed into rescue centres for many and various reasons. These dogs do not necessarily have behaviour problems. Sometimes a loving owner may have died or cannot keep their pet any longer for other reasons. However, there is no question that even putting a balanced dog into a rescue centre will cause it […]
That’s all very well to say but if you are a keen gardener or even a mildly interested one, it’s extremely frustrating to find a scale model of the World War 1 trenches trailing across your garden when you want to mow the lawn or simply relax! So why do dogs do it? It’s instinctual […]
Recently I told a tale of how the mood and assumptions of a dog’s owner affect the way a dog feels. It put me in mind of a situation I came across not so long ago in which I was asked to help a young couple with their dogs. They had been married a few […]
When I talk to dog owners about how good their dogs are at coming when they are called I nearly always get the answer that the dog is trained to come when she’s called and is very good at the recall, except when something distracts her. To me that says that the dog is not […]
A week on Sunday is Bonfire Night and you can bet there’ll be plenty of bangs, whizzes and crashes rending the skies, from this weekend onwards. This is the time of year when thousands of our household pets will be cowering in terror or running away in fear from all these noises and lights that […]
Barking is not really the problem in domesticated dogs. It’s stopping it when you’ve had enough that causes the headaches! Barking is natural for dogs. It’s a signal to the rest of the world and they often enjoy doing it. They use it to communicate with other dogs and with people and we sometimes encourage […]
Daily life can be very boring for the average companion dog. After all, most dogs were bred to perform a useful function and these days the majority of them are expected to be happy to do very little except when we find time to take them out or give them our attention. In the wild, […]
The reason so many dogs pull on their leads and drag their long-suffering owners along the street is because those owners have inadvertently taught their dogs that pulling is the way to move forward. Think about what happens when a dog reaches the end of its lead. The owner pulls back, the dog braces […]
When your pup arrives in your home at about 8 weeks of age he has a set of needles for teeth. They are not much good for chewing bones but they are sharp and they hurt! This is not an unfortunate accident. Those teeth help your puppy to understand how hard it is acceptable to […]
“Snoopy hadn’t realised that bouncing up to people’s shoulders, barking and bouncing about didn’t suit his retired owners. They had wanted a calm dog to go with them on sedate walks and Snoopy didn’t know the meaning of calm! He was taken to a foster home to wait for a new family. This made him […]