A reader once asked, “How can a dog bark for such great lengths of time? If I holler and scream for a long time, I lose my voice.” The answer, of course, is practice. And it starts when they’re young. Take, for instance, Alf the Aussie, who lives down the street. He started out at the front window, barking sharply at passersby: “Stay away from my property. Just move it on by.” He was so successful at sending the mail carrier and other pedestrians scurrying that when his owner promoted him to the front yard, he increased his alarm duties,

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

As an animal behaviorist, science and animal behavior are always on my mind; which is why I came up with the idea for this blog in the middle of my deep-water running workout yesterday. I was listening to a podcast of NPR’s Fresh Air, while speeding along at an incredibly slow pace when an interesting question was posed by the guest, neurologist David Linden, author of The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. Why are Cigarettes More Addicting Than Heroin? He asked, “Why is it that 80% percent

Have you ever wondered, after a long walk at the beach, why your otherwise perfect dog likes to roll in dead fish? And more importantly how you can discourage the behavior?  Virtually everyone who owns a dog is familiar with this smelly habit. Whether it’s a bath in cow manure, a plunge into the nearest road kill, or a leisurely massage in a long gone fish at the beach, dogs wear foul scents the way people wear perfume. Do they just like the smell? Is it an olfactory disguise their ancestors used when hunting prey downwind?  While most dog aficionados, including

Question: I have a 17-month-old Labrador Retriever who has a very bad habit. When I let her out in the backyard, she bites off the watering jets of our irrigation system. Worse, if I leave her out for a long time (over five minutes), she gets at the main irrigation hoses and she has chewed right through them. This is a nightmare in terms of repairs, costs and loss of function. Can you offer any advice? Answer: Like furniture scratching problems in cats, one strategy for curbing the destruction here is to direct the behavior at a more appropriate object,

As a pet owner it’s pretty easy to care for our pets responsibly, but when it comes to what others do, we have less control. Take the plight of this cat lover for instance: Our female, spayed, indoor-only cat is the recipient of unwanted nocturnal visits from a neighborhood male cat. We have floor-to-ceiling windows in our garden through which this intruding cat can practically touch noses with ours. Our cat howls, snarls and spits when he appears (usually in the middle of the night) and practically flings herself into the glass to get at him. We have tried lowering