• Does your dog have trouble with stairs?
• Some situations call for a default behavior from our dogs
• Links and Social Stream Activity

Please Share This Email

Forward This Email

Happy New Year!  We hope the holidays went well for you and your animals!  We are usually away for Christmas with family, but this year, we spent Thanksgiving with family and had Christmas in Colorado.  And, it was a white Christmas, indeed!  We got a foot of snow just a few days before.  We've included some quick video of the dogs romping through the deep snow. Click here. 



Does your dog have trouble with stairs?

I recently worked with a couple of clients whose dogs were having trouble navigating stairs. In both cases, the families live in split level homes with several stairs but not full flights of stairs.

 

In the first case, the dog manages to go up the stairs in a reasonable fashion, but he leaps down the stairs, perhaps hitting one or two out of seven or so steps. He is a retired racing greyhound who is relatively new to stairs. In working with him, I noticed that his rear feet would hit the edge of the step and not hit flat on the step. His trouble is a lack of awareness of how and where to place his rear feet. By hitting the edge of the step, he doesn’t have good balance and is not feeling secure about the steps. To compensate, he leaps down the stairs. While he manages this way, it’s not a good long term solution as this can put a lot of strain on his joints. Arthritis or other problems can start to set in and cause pain.

 

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Some situations call for a default behavior from our dogs

When most people train their dogs, they expect their dogs to respond to verbal cues, hand signals or both. However, there are times when an automatic or default behavior is better. What is an automatic or default behavior? This is a behavior the dog is expected to perform in certain situations without a verbal cue or hand signal. The dog automatically does it, or does it by default.

 

Romeo practicing his default sit for attention with his friends Finnigan and Jasmine

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Links and Social Stream Activity

• Do Animals Have Empathy? ow.ly/88TAi What do you think?
• Extraordinary Dog, Extraordinary Job: ow.ly/86TKE
• Knowing When to Stop Play or Training: ow.ly/86TIp
• 40 Ways to Help Dogs: Some tried and true, and some you’ve never thought of!: ow.ly/85rt0
• 50 best photos from The Natural World: ow.ly/85jDj Stunning images here.
• How to Look for Signs of Cancer in Your Dog: ow.ly/81M9I
• Retractable leashes pose problems for people and their pets:ow.ly/81LRC
• Your Dog Has a Brain in His Gut: ow.ly/7ZUDN
• Setting His Own Dinner Table: Spontaneous Tool Use by a Dingo:ow.ly/7Y1GX
• Biking and swimming with 16 dogs – great control by the owner over this entire bunch: ow.ly/7Y1c7
• Bayer Launches “Lost Pet Alert Network” to Help Reunite Missing Pets with their Owners: ow.ly/7WC8C

Sue Brown, MNM, CDBC, CPDT-KA and Ed Soehnel, The wife/husband team of The Light of Dog, with Jahzara, our Greyhound and Romeo, our Vizsla. 

Sue conducts all training for Love My Dog Training, our business in metro-Denver, Colorado, since 2004. Sue has been providing dog training and behavior counseling since 1996. She is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant and Certified Professional Dog Trainer with over 15 years of experience. She has written for the APDT Chronicle of the Dog and was a contributor to the book The Association of Pet Dog Trainers Top Tips from Top Trainers: 1001 Practical Tips and Techniques for Successful Dog Care and Training published in 2010. She also writes a bimonthly Ask the Trainer column for the Colorado Greyhound Adoption newsletter and is the the Co-Founder of the Colorado Dog Trainers Network, which provides networking, training and dog -related education, business education, and referral sources for trainers in Colorado. Her designations include: approved Canine Good Citizen (CGC) Evaluator; Certified Dog Behavior Consultant through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants; Certified Professional Dog Trainer through the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers; and, a Professional Member and the Greeter for the State of Colorado of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers.

Ed’s background is leading consumer product/service companies, from start-up through exit. He has a strong skill set in marketing, sales, branding, product development and finance. He splits most of his time between The Light Of Dog and Love My Dog Training, but also provides consulting to start-up and small consumer product companies and owns a small tree farm where he and Sue live. Ed has an MBA from the University of Denver

Please Share This Email

Forward This Email

Did someone else forward this email to you?  Then we invite you to subscribe to our mailing list  to get our latest blog posts directly in your inbox.