Have you ever had a patient you wanted to “flip the lip” for a dental exam, but the patient was anxious about mouth handling? Raising the upper lip, also known as “Flip the lip” can be difficult for pets’ who are wary of handling around the head. These situations are challenging, and pose a bite risk to handlers and veterinarians. I try to think of ways to get an exam done while reducing stress and aggression. In one of her lectures, Dr. Sophia Yin demonstrated using pretzel sticks to give rewards to dogs that grabbed at food. If they bit

      In spring of 2011, the headlines in western Finland blared; “Man bludgeoned with hammer by four thugs and left in the forest to die”. Against all odds the victim was found by a woodsman and miraculously made it to the hospital where he was stabilized. It wasn’t a random incident; the man knew his attackers and the police were quickly able to take the four into custody. The police then coaxed the location of the weapon out of the suspects and found the hammer where the suspects said it would be—in a river, which would be walled

NEW DVD! Desensitization and Counterconditioning: Teaching Dogs to Willingly Accept Medical Procedures Dr. Sophia Yin’s passion was helping people understand animal behavior in an effort to bring people and their pets closer. She envisioned her Low Stress Handling techniques becoming the standard of care for anyone who works with animals. Her commitment to helping people communicate with their pets in a positive and scientifically sound way led her to create a suite of Low Stress Handling labs focused on the critical skills required to improve animal training and the experiences they have in medical procedures. This most recent release is the

Separating Feuding Fidos If you have a dog and he goes to the dog park, lives with doggie housemates, or otherwise socializes with other dogs, chances are at some point you may need to break up a spat. These may range from low-level altercations with no real contact to a no-bites-spared brawl. So what should you do? First, realize that regardless of the amount of noise, most fights between unfamiliar dogs at the dog park or first fights between housemates are spit and drool matches. When bites are involved during these fights, dogs generally bite and release. So in the

Dog Aggression Dog Aggression available here in our store. You may know many techniques for dealing with your reactive or aggressive dog, but with many dogs, to get the results you want you need a clear step-by-step plan.  First you need to realize that every interaction is a training session, so what you do outside of official sessions may undermine your progress. Second, for fast and enduring results it’s often essential to improve the dog’s impulse and emotional control. Third, your training will require good technique and an integrative approach and should focus on creating a dog who is happy,

For most pet parents, having a dog that’s well trained would be nice but doesn’t seem like a necessity. This is especially true if the dog spends most of his time in familiar places—such as the home, or the yard, or just on short walks in the neighborhood. He may be so used to the scene that he never gets excited enough or distracted enough to be bothersome. It turns out that you can’t count on life being so mundane. One family found this out the expensive way when their Holiday house plan went awry. It was Easter Sunday and