Dog Psychology Archives - Page 4 of 19

A newborn baby is introduced to the family dog

10 Principles for Achieving Balance

How To Get Your Dog Ready For The Baby

Congratulations! You’re expecting a new human addition to the family, and it’s likely you’re preparing by setting up the nursery, shopping for diapers and other necessities, and taking a class in newborn care. But don’t overlook one important step: getting your dog ready for this life change. Here’s the good news: it’s likely your dog is already aware something is up. Changes in the mom-to-be’s scent and body have clued him into the impending arrival. And even if you’re becoming parents by adopting or expecting through a surrogate, there are still things going on as you prepare — your excitement

September 1, 2019 No Comments

All About Dogs

Inside Your Dog’s Mind: What They Feel For You

It’s something we dog lovers have likely pondered any number of times when our pet looks at us with those wise, wide eyes: “I wonder what he’s thinking…” Two recent studies are moving us closer than ever to a definitive answer. In a UK study, two researchers at Goldsmiths College in London, Deborah Custance and Jennifer Mayer, set out to determine if dogs are capable of empathy — an ability to truly understand emotion. “I had talked to so many people who have dogs who say, ‘it’s like my dog is trying to comfort me,’” says Custance. Though she admits

August 28, 2019 No Comments

Be the Pack Leader

Not Quite Sure…

I want you to remember a time when you went into a new situation or a strange place, and then think about how you felt. Maybe it was starting a new school or a new job, or visiting a city you’d never been to before. Maybe it was a first date — or a second date with someone you really liked. Going into New Situations Now think about how you felt going into that situation. Chances are you were anxious, or maybe a little scared. Maybe you even tried to avoid that situation because of the way you felt. But

August 18, 2019 No Comments

10 Principles for Achieving Balance

How To Redirect A Dog

One of the most important skills for preventing your dog’s misbehavior is knowing how to redirect them before they act. Redirection simply means taking their attention away from whatever they’re focused on and bringing it back to you. Don’t confuse redirection with blocking. The former is for use when your dog’s energy level is lower and does not involve touch. The latter is necessary when a dog’s energy level is above a five out of 10, and does require touch. Cesar’s “Tsch!” sound is redirection, while his touch with three fingers in a “claw” is blocking. This article will be

July 16, 2019 No Comments

All About Dogs

5 Tips For Building Boundaries

It’s important to give a dog rules, boundaries, and limitations. In other words, our dogs need to know what they can do, where they can do it, and for how long. In this article, I’m going to focus on boundaries: teaching your dog where they are and are not allowed to go. Here are 5 Tips For Building Boundaries Establishing boundaries can solve canine behavior problems like getting on the furniture, begging at the table, or bolting when a door is opened. In effect, when you create a boundary you’re building an invisible barrier and teaching your dog not to

July 7, 2019 No Comments

A woman gently pets a dog that she just met.

All About Dogs

How To Get A Dog To Trust You

We’ve probably all had the experience of asking whether we could pet someone’s dog only to have the dog completely ignore us or try to run away, and it’s not uncommon for adult rescue dogs to be a little aloof at first. It’s easy to take this personally and think that the dog doesn’t like us, but that’s because we’re looking at it from a human perspective. When two human strangers meet, our rules say that we introduce ourselves and shake hands. Dogs don’t have that rule with other dogs or with humans. Dog socialization is different from human socialization.

July 7, 2019 No Comments

A dog and her pack leader go for a walk on a fall day.

All About Dogs

Train Your Dog To Look At You

Training is a necessary and important part of having a dog. Besides housebreaking, training your dog to look at you may be the most important lesson to teach her. It can not only be immensely helpful at home and out in public, but also important for your dog’s safety. If you can get your dog to focus on you instead of everything else going on around him, it will be easier to communicate with him and teach him other commands — not to mention getting him to ignore that taunting squirrel, far-off bark, or daily visit from the mailman. In

July 6, 2019 No Comments

Humans can learn a lot from their four legged friends

Be the Pack Leader

How Humans Can Learn From Dogs

For centuries, we’ve been teaching dogs to do things for us. Recently, we’ve come to find that man’s best friend is capable of teaching children and adults in ways people cannot. This is how humans can learn from dogs. Working therapy dogs One group, the Pet Prescription Team (PPT) in La Habra, California, works a special team of therapy dogs at Help for Brain Injured Children, Inc. (HBIC), a non-profit school for children and young adults with moderate to severe multiple disabilities. During their sessions, certain exercises are performed, each with a different goal: Walking the dog develops motor skills;

June 25, 2019 No Comments

Read your dog's body language to understand their personality.

Dog Psychology

Pack Leadership Technique 5: Read Your Dog’s Body Language.

Read Your Dog’s Body Language. While humans primarily use words to communicate, dogs use energy to communicate, expressing it through body language. To communicate with our dogs, we need to learn and adapt their ‘language’ rather than expecting them to learn ours. Decoding Your Dog’s Language One way to decode a dog’s language is to remember that Energy = Intention _ Emotion. A dog’s energy ‘ his intention and emotions, working together ‘ are communicated by his body language. A dog’s play bow to another dog illustrates how this works. The motion is forward, but the front of the dog’s

June 20, 2019 No Comments

All About Dogs

5 Steps To Being The Pack Leader

Before you can have a balanced pack, you have to have a Pack Leader, and the leader(s) needs to be every human in the pack, all the way from the oldest family member to the youngest — including the grandparents and even the baby. In order to achieve this position, you have to let your dog know that the people are in charge, but you can’t do that with words. You have to communicate with your dog in the way that she’ll understand, which means that you have to learn to think like a dog. Before you can think like

June 12, 2019 No Comments