Are you disheartened by your dog’s barking, lunging and overall difficult behavior on walks? If so, you are in good company. Judging by the number of dogs that morph into maniacs when they see me walking or jogging by with my terrier, Jonesy, it seems like over 50% of the dog population must suffer from this behavioral affliction. How can this situation be turned around? The trick is not some vague recommendation to be more confident or to be a leader, rather the solution is in specific techniques and skills. Skills that can be practiced in drills like a sport,

In Part 1 of this article, I interviewed Greg Snyder, Tristan Christianson, and Fred Schechter, three engineers who formerly worked for The Sharper Image, to learn about the process of developing a pet product. In this article, I continue with interview and learn about the project that brought them back together. Question: Dr. Yin: So, tell me about this product, The Foobler.  Who decided to make this product, and when did you guys decide to get together and work on it? Answer: Tristan: Foobler we’ve been working on for about a year now. It is, basically, if you’re familiar with smart

Have you ever seen a product for pets and thought, “that company should change the product just a little and it would be perfect for me and my dog,” or noticed a lack of product on the market and thought, “If only someone made something that did THIS, everyone would buy it! I wonder why this product hasn’t already been made?” Well, today I want to introduce a new product, the Foobler, a time-release treat ball food-dispenser, and show you what goes into the making of a product. In 2002, I had the pleasure of working with The Sharper Image

My general rule of thumb is that we should use methods that focus on rewarding the correct behavior, starting with steps the dog can easily perform and quickly moving on to steps that are closer and closer to our goal behavior.

“A month ago we couldn’t even take Boo, our Lhasa Apso mix, out on walks because he would bark and lunge at other dogs no matter how far away they were. It was embarrassing and even dangerous,” says Theresa Montemayor. That changed in October, after Theresa and her husband David attended Dr. Yin’s Reactive Dogs Workshop in Davis, California. After just a couple of weeks, Boo was good enough so that he could participate in a class full of dogs. “Now, with a gentle leader head collar, he can go on walks with no problem—even when he has to pass a lot

Last time we looked at how to use a science-based approach (use of counterconditioning) to dealing with dogs with food bowl aggression and saw that by approaching the problems systematically the solution was pretty straightforward. So how do we tweak that approach to the case where the dog is food aggressive only towards other dogs?