For a very good guide to all sorts of dog training processes and dog behavior challenges, I use and recommend Clickertraining ...that link goes to the description of this terrific ebook you download immediately, wherever you are! -- Rosana

Every year on holidays when humans get rowdy and maybe use fireworks, many dogs have a hard time with the noises. Some get scared and run away in a panic.  With Halloween coming right up, do consider whether your dog will be exposed to sounds that could be difficult. Any neighbors who typically have a big party… or do you have one? Do you get a bunch of trick or treaters?

Whatever your situation, with the holiday season coming up soon enough, this is a good time to be sure your dog’s ID tag is securely on his collar, that the tag has a current phone number on it, and that it is still legible. If you don’t have one, you can get them at many places, online and offline, and they cost just a few dollars.

It may be that you can use the Halloween events to do some training with your dog. For example, if your dog tends to jump up on people who arrive when the doorbell rings, and if you have a lot of trick or treaters, you could devise some sort of training plan to take advantage of the situation. This is along the lines of if you have a lemon, make lemonade!

Exactly what this could be would depend on a variety of factors, but let’s say that there are two people in your household, or that you recruit a friend. One of you could be stationed outside the front door, where you would ask any older children or adults if they were willing to help. If they said yes,  give them a dog biscuit to toss to the dog but only after he sits on command. Then let them ring the doorbell. Something like that… whatever works in your situation!

If you have cats, specially black cats, be sure that they are inside! But I bet you knew that already.

Do you observe your dog’s face?

“Of course,” you may be thinking. “I look at it dozens of times a day.” Read the rest of this entry

For the Love of a Dog (Amazon link), by Patricia McConnell, is the best dog book I have read in a long time.

The subtitle is “Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend.” McConnell writes with emotion herself, and some of my favorite parts of the book were stories of her dogs and her small sheep ranch. She is also a scientist, complete with a Ph.D. in zoology. Add to that over seventeen years of working with clients and their dogs, specializing in aggressive dogs, and there is a lot to learn from this book.

I expect to be blogging about ideas I got from the book, and re-reading my marked-up copy regularly, but now here’s a summary of what’s in For the Love of a Dog: Read the rest of this entry

My husband and I came home last month from a ten-week trip without our dogs. We flew, and our two dogs would not fit under any airplane seat! Nor would we subject them to flying in the baggage compartment. It wasn’t easy for me to be away from them for so long, and from what I hear, the dogs weren’t exactly happy campers, specially at first. We had a friend living in our house, and she took care of both dogs and both cats just fine.

Our habit when we leave the house for a few hours is to leave LarryDog inside, where he prefers to be. Our Rottweiler Lola has the run of the yard, which has high fences and walls, so she is very secure. We even have a small fence between our parking area by the street and the rest of the yard, so we can come and go in our car without having to grab her first.

Our front sunroom has a dog door, and so she can go in there to lie in her crate or get out of the rain or sun. There is also a sofa with cushions, a recliner, and a table with four chairs… Read the rest of this entry