Blog — Health and Well-Being

  Many people are aware that puppies go through a "fear period" where they are particularly sensitive to experiences, and that it is important to protect them from having bad experiences during this time. Did you know that there is a second "fear period" during adolescence? As dogs become sexually mature, they go through another imprinting phase where positive and negative experiences become especially salient to their learning and ultimately end up shaping their personality.      This is a great time to keep training and hand feeding high on the priority list. You will probably see breed traits become...

  Guests for this podcast are brother and sister, Campbell and Nerida, who grew up immersed in the world of dogs at their family’s boarding kennels, where their mum bred and showed champion Borzoi and kept Staffies. After finishing school, Campbell wasn’t sure what direction to take, so he traveled the world before settling into a decade-long career in finance. Realising this was not a fulfilling career, he reignited his passion for dogs and decided to make it his life’s work. Campbell joined a mentorship program, and obsessively studied canine behavior, securing a job as a behavior trainer at Melbourne’s...

"Confidence Building" is one of those trendy phrases in dog training right now. But what types of activities actually build confidence and expand your dog's emotional capacity? I believe our dogs need physical challenges that come with real risks and rewards, as opposed to contrived challenges in controlled settings. What better way to give your dog a therapy session than to do some actual confidence building out in nature? Then you get the added bonus of some much needed forest bathing outside of the city, while providing small but real obstacles for them to conquer! Every time we go to...

Is my dog in a state of drive, or a state of fear?   Lately I've been wanting to help people understand that there is a difference between a dog who has behavioral issues and a dog who is simply acting out his genetics. Behavioral issues, in my mind, are interruptions in a dog's natural way of being which cause distress to the dog, his owner, and other dogs or animals. These issues are labeled as: reactivity, aggression, hyperactivity, self-harm, obsessive-compulsive patterns, depression, anxiety, etc. The dog is not feeling well, and his behavior is a problem for those around...

  All I want for Christmas this year is for everyone (including myself!) to stop romanticizing dogs. Yes, that's right, dogs are not Disney characters. I think we've been weirdly conditioned by movies like "Lady and the Tramp" and "101 Dalmations" to feel that dogs are just like us: They want to live indoors and eat spaghetti, raise their babies among humans, walk through city parks, and enjoy watching TV by the fire as much as we do. Dogs are actually still so closely related to wolves that they can interbreed with them. This, by some opinions, makes them the...