The Modern Bark | Dog Training Tips

Sad Lucy on her first day home from the shelter, hiding under the coffee table.  Photo by Tim Dawson Helping Rescue Dogs Adjust to Their New Families While many rescue and shelter dogs are ready to adjust to their new family lives, others can be anxious or fearful of their new environment and family members. The constant changes in their circumstances leading up to adoption are often bewildering, and can make an otherwise laid-back and eager-to-please dog, cautious or even suspicious of its new surroundings. These tips from top obedience trainers can help ease your new canine family member's transition into his new lifestyle, and quickly build bonds of trust between you and your new best friend. How to Approach Your Rescue Dog When Petting Him Research shows that dogs that are highly stimuli-reactive and those with fear aggression are most likely to bite their owners if startled when they are approached.  Before petting your new dog, first say his name, and be su...

Did he do it? Does this dog look guilty to you? Is it a mistake to confer human emotions and motives on our dogs? Are dogs really more human than some of us are prepared to believe?  Recently, dogs have become the new darlings of cognitive science, and research exploring the range of canine emotions and cognitive abilities is mounting at an exponential rate. Among the many human characteristics attributed to dogs is the concept of guilt. It’s not unusual for a dog owner to state, “I knew he had done something; he had that ‘guilty look.’” We all know that doleful, guilty dog expression, but does it really demonstrate that dogs feel shame? If not, what’s behind it? Researchers at University Barnard College in New York set out to answer a few of these questions. The Guilty Dog Experiement In a study by Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College, dogs were placed in a controlled environment where they and their owners were setup to make guilty...

Luna's puppies emerging from their den Crate training, when properly done, provides owners with peace of mind during those times when they cannot monitor the activities of their new puppy or dog.  Dogs Love Their Dens and Crates Dogs are essentially den animals by nature, meaning they instinctively enjoy being in dark close quarters.  In the wild, expectant mothers dig dens in order to whelp and raise their new puppies.  In fact, our border collie regularly digs dens or re-excavates old dens in accordance with her seasons to prepare for her coming or imaginary litters.  These dens are relatively spacious, and will protect the puppies from the elements such as summer heat, winter snow and rain. Their den maintains a relatively constant temperature, as it is typically one foot underground.  Here the puppies will stay until they begin to walk and venture out short distances from the den, returning to the den to sleep and nurse.  With proper i...

The average dog can learn as many as 150 words, a fairly substantial vocabulary beyond sit, stay and come. Research with several border collies has brought those vocabulary numbers up beyond 400 words, and a border collie named Chaser has learned the names of 1022 objects, which he can differentiate and fetch on command.  There appears to be no upper limit in Chaser's vocabulary lessons, as he continues to add words to his lexicon. In the wake of such impressive results, researchers Emile van der Zee, Helen Zulch and Daniel Mills sought to determine the presence of a key feature of human word comprehension in canine learning. In the research article,  Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis familiaris): Is Shape Important?, the researchers sought to determine if shape bias existed in dogs as it does in humans. Experiments with human 2 year olds, have shown a "shape bias" exists in the learning of new words.  Simply put, once the child associates a name with ...