While I don’t agree with everything Ray says, what Ray taught me is that we always should seek to view commonly held ideas in a new light. Questioning what we know, challenging what we have heard, and testing our ideas to see if they hold up is what makes animal behavior a science. don_owings Don Owings Probably few, if any, dog trainers know Don Owings (pictured to the right) because he’s a giant in another field of behavior—acoustic communication in animals. He was one of my mentors when I was earning my animal behavior Masters. What Don gave me was a sense of the

An Odd Request That Appeared Out of the Blue One interesting aspect of scientific research is that you never know when a simple question suddenly will catapult you into a wild race for answers, followed by a lifetime’s worth of ideas and possibilities. That’s what makes scientific research so interesting. For example, in July 2003, my research took such a turn when, out the blue, I received a message from The Sharper Image, a San Francisco-based gadget company. “We want to develop an electronic mood translation device,” they said. “One that really works.” Because my research was on barking as

Applied animal psychology brings together the two formerly unrelated fields of professional animal training and modern behavioral science. The field is new in that it represents, we believe, the first application of systematic behavior theory to the control of animal behavior.

My suspicions were confirmed the day after Christmas at the Metreon Theater downtown. As the youngest in the family, my job was to wait in line and knowing this, I went prepared—with a scientific article called, “Do dogs respond to play signals given by humans?”  The research, lead by Nicola Rooney at the Anthrozoology Institute in Southhampton, U.K., starred 21 owners who were videotaped playing with their dogs. In what surely would have been billed as a comedy, owners patted, the floor, barked, bowed, shuffled their feet, slapped their thighs, crawled on all fours, anything to get their Rovers to

When a child is bitten by a four-legged family member, it can turn the household upside-down. Owners feel puzzled and confused. “They sleep together all the time,” they might say, or, “He’s always been really good. He even lets Timmy sit on him.” In a majority of cases, the bite seems out of the blue. The humans can’t fathom why their once-trusted companion would bite an innocent child. But anyone who reads “dog” or can see life from the pet’s point of view would most likely say, “I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.” The fact is, a quick perusal of

A reader once asked me, “My cat is an avid hunter, and in our area there appears to be a plentiful supply of rats and mice. He was bringing me samples on a daily basis and I had to export the live ones and bury the dead ones. I now partially closed the cat door so that he could get out but not in. However, this leaves him out at night and there seems to be creatures out there that could hunt him. Do you have any suggestions for what I should do? Can I program him to leave his