These are simple common sense tips that should guide interactions with patients on a daily basis. By keeping them in mind, pet care professionals can not only improve the experience for the patient and client, they can also improve their own satisfaction with their job.

“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?

If you peruse the internet for animal training advice, you’ll see a lot of information that seems to make sense, but if you know the science behind how animals learn you know that these statements are misinformed. For instance: A zoo trainer might claim, “It’s difficult to train our lions because they are overly motivated for food. They get so excited that they can’t focus on what we want them to do.” A dog owner might state, “I ignore my dog when he jumps and reward him when he sits, just like that book I read says, but he still jumps to

It’s week 1 of our quarterly 7-week dog class and we have some fun and exciting updates in store. First, this quarter two of our student employees, Lynna and Lauren, get to teach one exercise each week. That allows me and co-instructor, Melissa Morris, CPDT-KA, to assist with the demo so that there are more “demonstrators” for the participants to watch. It also allows us to test out our curriculum for training new instructors to teach our specific training program. As usual, the set of classes started off with our introductory workshop-game show. In this workshop, we find out about

When it comes to training our dogs, we all have some physical and coordination challenges at times. When you’re confined to a wheelchair those challenges can be amplified. It’s at those times that something like the Treat&Train®, remote controlled food reward device can come in handy. Just ask Ashley Anderson, a third year veterinary student from the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. “We got our St. Bernard puppy, Lucy, when she was 10 week old,” states Ashley, and we put her in puppy classes right away. She behaved very well for me. She was always eager to learn and