We Asked a Computer Program about Dog Behavior and Here’s What It said
January 5, 2023
ChatGPT is in step with modern canine behavior science and we’re happy to see it!
Janis Bradley
Judgment Free Pet Rehoming Reunited a Senior Dog and His Person
January 3, 2023
There’s scientific research to back up why this works.
Action Patterns Aren’t Personality. Here’s What a Recent Canine Genetics Study Really Means About Your Dog’s Behavior
December 21, 2022
A new genetics study reveals more about the canine division of labor in ancient times, but not about your dog’s individual personality.
Ground-Breaking Research Shows Breed As a Poor Predictor of Behavior
August 11, 2022
The Darwin’s Ark study on dog behavior and genetics might reset how we all think about and talk about dog behavior.
Building Social Competence: The real deal in dog safety training
November 22, 2021
In 2013 the most comprehensive study to date asked whether the dogs (fewer than 1 dog in 2 million) involved in dog bite-related fatalities (DBRF) had anything in common with one another. The collaboration of a veterinary epidemiologist, a public health expert, an animal behaviorist and dog behavior researchers examined the available evidence regarding every DBRF in the US over a 10 year period, a total of 256. They found 7 situations that were often missing in the lives of
A Dog and Her Family Show Us the Importance of Social Competency
September 4, 2021
“Oh behave,” we often say to our children and dogs alike, when they do stuff that irritates us. But no one, not kids and not puppies either are born knowing how to “behave.” Understanding what’s expected of them, and how to read the signals others give off, and generally how to behave appropriately in social situations, even to recognize the feelings of others all have to be learned. In the language of developmental psychology, all this learning is collected under
Words Matter 101: Let’s get rid of the A word
August 19, 2021
I have a personal litmus test for dog knowledge among humans. If someone asks, “is that dog aggressive?” I understand immediately that we are starting from zero. Karen Overall, the noted behaviorist, once said that as far as she could tell, the word “aggression” simply meant anything a person didn’t like. She was speaking to an audience of dog professionals. More than 60 years ago, John Paul Scott, one of the earliest and most revered of canine behavior researchers, declared
Canine public policies shouldn’t be created from media reports
July 7, 2021
Dr. Gary Patronek and his colleagues, the authors of a ten-year study of dog bite-related fatalities (DBRF) did something not attempted before or since—they gathered their data from massive accumulations of reports and interviews done by officials, from investigating officers to coroners and pathologists. Previous work on the subject had always been based on collections of reports in the popular media. One of Patronek et al’s discoveries was that the dog (or dogs) involved usually simply lived on the owner’s
The QAnon of Canine Behavior Science
June 17, 2021
A story on NPR reports that the most popular facebook post on the brief suspension of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in April was not CNN or NYT or ABC News or Fox News. They were all in the top five, but number one was a conspiracy theorist called An0maly who describes himself as a “news analyst and hip hop artist.” This kind of reliance on wildly unreliable information sources is not limited to high profile public issues. One of the
Red herrings and just plain lies: Insurance companies vs. dog loving families
April 29, 2021
There has been much discussion lately explaining how denial of insurance coverage based on the breed of one’s family dog is a practice that discriminates against and unduly penalizes both less affluent customers and people of color.