Posted by Mike on June 12, 2010 under 1. Info Collection, 3. Class Status | 
A few questions have been posed regarding our arranged activity schedule.
Walks, hikes and other outings are just arranged by us. That’s the end of our involvement. We set the the time and place - provide a map of the area if possible, but that’s it! We don’t offer any training during these outings and sometime a rep. from College for Pets may not even be there.
Outings are held rain or shine, although if it’s a particularly exciting location, we might schedule a second outing, should the weather not cooperate.
Check the current schedule on the activities page of the website.
Posted by Mike on May 13, 2010 under 3. Class Status |
Enjoy your weekend! Watch for the upcoming newsletter for group hikes and summer classes. If you haven’t yet signed up for the newsletter: www.collegeforpets.com/newsletter.
Posted by Mike on March 4, 2010 under 1. Info Collection |
Social Cognition in Dogs, or How did Fido get so smart? « The Thoughtful Animal: “The Thoughtful Animal
exploring thought and cognition in the non-human animal (and sometimes the human animal, too!)
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Posted by: Jason | February 25, 2010
Social Cognition in Dogs, or How did Fido get so smart?
Figure 1: Dogs are pretty intelligent.
Domesticated dogs seem to have an uncanny ability to understand human communicative gestures. If you point to something the dog zeroes in on the object or location you’re pointing to (whether it’s a toy, or food, or to get his in-need-of-a-bath butt off your damn bed and back onto his damn bed). Put another way, if your attention is on something, or if your attention is directed to somewhere, dogs seem to be able to turn their attention onto that thing or location as well.
Figure 2: My friend (and Presentation blogger) Les Posen and his dog Shrek, who is attending to the same newspaper as his owner.
Amazingly, dogs seem to be better at this than primates (including our nearest cousins, the chimpanzee”
(Via .)
Posted by Mike on under 1. Info Collection |
Origin of Small Dogs Pinned Down | LiveScience: ”
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Origin of Small Dogs Pinned Down
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 01 March 2010 09:24 am ET
Buzz up!
Comments (8) | Recommend (5)
The ancestor of all those Chihuahuas, spaniels and tiny terriers likely came from the Middle East, a new study finds.
All domestic dog breeds that exist in the world today in their myriad forms are the result of the domestication of the gray wolf. And gradually, as humans selected for traits they wanted in their dogs — herding ability, particular temperaments and size — dogs diversified.
Sponsored Links Pure Breed Dogs at Bing™Sort Dogs by Size, Temperament, and More. Try Visual Search Today! www.Bing.com/VisualSearch Small Animal TherapyAdvanced Laser therapy for Pain management, wounds & rehabilitation www.Compani”
(Via .)
Posted by Mike on February 1, 2010 under 1. Info Collection |
Cats manipulate their owners with a cry embedded in a purr [Not Exactly Rocket Science]:While dogs can often be taught new tricks, cat-owners will be all too aware that it can be very difficult to persuade them to do something they don’t want to do. Eddie Izzard summed it up best in his legendary Pavlov’s cat sketch, where felines are quite capable of outfoxing (outcatting?) eminent Welsh-Russian psychologists. Real cats may be less devious, but only just - new research suggests that they are very skilled at getting their human owners to do their bidding.
When they want food, domestic cats will often purr in a strangely plaintive way that their owners find difficult to ignore. By analysing the structure of these calls, Karen McComb from the University of Sussex has found out why. On the surface, the ’solicitation purrs’ are based on the same low-pitched sounds that contented moggies make, but embedded within them is a high-pitched signal that sounds like a cry or a meow. It’s this hidden signal that makes the purr of a hungry cat so irresistible to humans.
McComb has a long history of research into animal communication and she has studied the calls of African elephants, red deer, lions and macaques. But it was her own cat, Pepo (pictured above), who provided the inspiration for this study.
‘He consistently woke me up in the mornings with very insistent purring,’ she said.”I wondered why this purring sounded so annoying and was so difficult to ignore.’ Talking with other cat owners, I found that some of them also had cats who showed strikingly similar behaviour.’ As I was an academic who actually worked on vocal communication [in mammals], I had the right background, tools and collaborators to tackle this question directly.’
Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…
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(Via ScienceBlogs: Life Science.)
Posted by Mike on under 1. Info Collection |
Now that you have determined the object you would like your dog to locate, we can begin to teach the dog to discriminate the scent of your specific object. For this tutorial, we will use a small stick that has been “primed” with a couple drops of vanilla scent. Remember that you don’t have to use a stick, but can use any object you desire. I recommend “priming” the object with a specific scent, if it doesn’t have one naturally. Over time we will decrease the amount of “priming” scent that we apply, but that will be addressed in a later tutorial.
Begin with the stick in your hand and the dog nearby. Hold out the stick and soon as the dog’s nose touches the stick ( which should happen rather quickly, to investigate the new object ), mark the moment with a “good!” or a clicker click ( if the dog is clicker trained ), and offer a small piece of food reward. Retract the stick and move a few feet away. Repeat the exercise in this manner five more times.
By this point, your dog is likely associating that touching the stick earns both praise and treat. Work on this a few times each day, then watch for part three of this tutorial.
Questions during the process? Please don’t hesitate to comment or send a message!
At the end of this tutorial series, we will be accepting video of your dog’s progress to be posted in our video section and possibly included in one of our online lessons.
Posted by Mike on January 29, 2010 under 1. Info Collection |
Annoyed by your dog’s nose being “velcro’d” to the ground? Why not harness his desire to sniff with a scent game or two…
It is a cold winter here in the Northeast and many of us heat with wood. Kindling ( the small bits of wood used to start/renew a fire ) supplies start to dwindle as the season wears on. You and your dog walk past oodles of twigs and fallen deadwood on your walks; why not teach him to scent out and retrieve those sticks and twigs? If firewood isn’t your thing, this skill can easily be transferred to locating money, kids, antlers….the list is endless.
The first step is to determine what it is you would like your dog to locate. Every other day or so I’ll post instructions on the next steps.
Posted by Mike on January 26, 2010 under 1. Info Collection |
New Hampshire Moves to Make Antifreeze Less Dangerous to Pets (and Children)
Several years ago a California state legislator made news with a gimmick. He invited school children in his Bay Area district to enter a contest through his office. Each entrant would draft a desired state law. The winning entry would be submitted to the state legislature for a vote.
When I first heard of the contest I thought it was silly. But the winning entry was brilliant. It required that antifreeze sold in California be made to taste bitter. The bill was submitted to the legislature, where it passed. Later it was signed into law.
The result has been a dramatic decrease in antifreeze toxicity in pets (and, I imagine, children) in California.
Antifreeze contains a compound called ethylene glycol. This chemical has a sweet odor and taste. It is attractive to pets and children.
When it is consumed, ethylene glycol initially causes the poisoned individual to feel drunk. However, the body metabolizes the chemical into products that clog the kidneys and lead to kidney failure. Ethylene glycol is one of the most toxic chemicals in common use.
Several other states now have laws similar to California’s. These include Virginia, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, Tennessee, and Maine.
And, if the New Hampshire House of Representatives gets its way, that state will be next to join the list.
That, of course, is good news. But I have to wonder why this simple, common sense proposal is spreading slowly state-by-state rather than through federal action.
