Just like us, cats feel fear, and their behavior changes in response to it. What makes one cat fearful or anxious may not make another one feel that way. 

Many cat owners never learned to trim their kitten’s nails and struggle with nail trims for their adult cat. To prevent scratches to people and furniture, as well as to decrease the potential of too long nails causing pain, difficulty walking, and other medical issues your cat’s nails will need to be trimmed from time to time. To make trimming your cat’s nails easy for you and acceptable for your cat will take time, patience, and rewards. There are several low stress handling methods that can be used to make it easier for you to trim nails, such as a

What is Enrichment and Why is it Important for Senior Dogs? Enrichment is offering experiences and opportunities to animals to encourage healthy natural behaviors and enhance physical and emotional welfare. Enrichment is often broken into two broad categories: environmental and social.  Environmental enrichment alters the animal’s space either by making changes to the environment itself or by adding novel items such as toys, feeding puzzles, exercise, and things to smell and explore. Social enrichment involves offering positive social experiences for the animal with people or other animals. Enrichment is important for all species of animals, including people! Sometimes we enrich

Technique for Kittens If you have a kitten, your work starts now! Between three and nine weeks, kittens are at an important age for socialization. Now is the time to expose your kitten to other people, animals, and situations such as nail trims. Treats are the best rewards to use with your kitten. This will help them associate nail trims with a positive experience.      Kitten on back Photo Courtesy of CattleDog Publishing      First, figure out what position your kitten prefers. Choose a position that will keep your kitten at ease and that will allow you to

What is resource guarding and why does it occur? Resource guarding is a relatively common behavior problem in dogs. It is defined as a dog using avoidance, threatening, or aggressive behaviors to retain control of food or other items in front of a person or other animal.  Sometimes, the signs of resource guarding are subtle. In these cases, your dog may show avoidance behavior or mild signs of aggression and anxiety such as stiff or crouched body posture, pinned back ears, lip licking, and physically blocking access to the resource. The aggression may escalate to more severe and overt signs

Why do dogs pull when leashed? Leash pulling is a common complaint among dog owners. Why do they do it? The world is an exciting place full of new scents, sights, sounds, playmates, etc. Leash pulling is a self-reinforcing behavior, which means that when the dog pulls, they get to go where they want, which is not necessarily where you want to go. Since the behavior works, the dog is likely to continue doing it. What do you want instead? Picture what you would like your dog to do, instead of pulling. For most people, teaching their dog to walk