If you wanna look cool and hip like me, check out my new favorite store, Pampering Pickle Goodies & Gifts for Dogs in Placerville, CA. I’ve never actually been there, but one benefit of having a human who travels and lectures a lot is that you get toys and surprises after each trip. A couple…

In this paper, the Brelands described a number of cases with different species where strong species-specific behaviors interfered with the learning process and caused delays in performance and delays in reinforcements. They called this phenomenon instinctive drift to describe the idea that animals have instinctive, species typical behaviors.

Readers will frequently ask me questions like, “My dog chases my cat, what do I do?” or, “My dog goes after my chickens so he can’t be outside. How do I stop it?”  I’m always surprised at the timing of these questions because they tend to occur right after I’ve explained in detail how to…

    Thirty years ago, this cartoon would have used the term punishment instead of incorrectly using the term negative reinforcement. But starting somewhere around the early 1990s, people have increasingly used the term negative reinforcement in cases where the technique is clearly punishment—that is when the technique is meant to stop a behavior. It probably…

As many of you know, I recently moved to a new house that is perfect for me and my pets. Actually, I mean almost perfect. There was one major change I had to make and that was to fix the grass. It turns out that dogs, plus grass, plus a year-round need to take photos…

If you’re like the general population, your dog has a decent or so-so come when called in the house, but outside in the yard or at the park, you might experiences something like this: “My dog doesn’t really like to run to me when I call her,” says one reader of this blog. “She prefers…