It’s fun to take your pooch to the park for off-leash play and dogs can look like they are having fun, but are they always learning the right things? One owner of a Bulldog knows all to well that the answer is no. “Max took a while to warm up to new people and dogs,” she says. “Then we left him with the breeder where he got to run around with other Bulldogs in what the breeder said was normal rough bulldog play. When we got him back he was suddenly barking and lunging people he would have just stayed

My dog, Milo, loves to explore at the off-leash park but, when it’s time to go home, it takes me 10 to 20 minutes to catch him to put him back on leash. What should I do? Rover loves to rough-house with other dogs but sometimes their owners get mad at me. I think he’s playing so they shouldn’t worry, but they say their dogs don’t like it. If I don’t leave the park, then they do. How can I train Rover to play more calmly? He is also reactive to dogs when on leash and will bark and lunge

Anyone who frequents the dog park and knows about dog behavior probably has a few horror stories to share and I am no exception. A couple of years ago, I was at my neighborhood park, which is a private multi-use park for dogs and people. It was an off-hour so it was just me, my dog, Jonesy, and my foster dog, a little Corgi with a history of some fear and reactivity to unfamiliar dogs. Jonesy was off-leash and the Corgi was on a long line. Generally, when I’m just with Jonesy, who is reactive towards unfamiliar dogs, especially those

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Every year, the UC Davis Animal Science Department raises and sells yearling horses at their annual auction. While most owners would be happy if their yearlings could lead nicely on halter and load calmly into a trailer, in the Spring of 2000, when I was teaching the behavior courses in the Animal Science Department, I helped the students in charge of the yearlings aim higher. Using a combination of clicker training and natural horsemanship, we trained a number of handy behaviors. One of the first things we taught was lateral and vertical bending. We taught the behaviors using two different

Every time I give a lecture on behavior modification, someone asks me, “But what if my dog’s not motivated for food?” This always makes me wonder if we live on the same planet. For one, if a dog were truly not motivated for food, he would dead. What the attendee really should be asking is “Why won’t my dog eat when I want to train him? Could it have anything to do with the fact that I leave his food out all day or give him table scraps and treats for free out of guilt whenever he looks at me?”