Oh Behave!

I should have known better.

Yesterday was Vinnie’s and my first public freestyle performance. We danced in a group routine at a dog festival in a park, with a large audience of dogs and their people, including my husband a.k.a, Vinnie’s “Papa.” (Very corny, I know. But c’mon, I have a hunch you’ve dished up some corny talk to your dog.)

Back to the festival. As soon as we arrived, a little voice in my head said, Uh oh. Vinnie was very excited. He wanted to play off-leash with other dogs, to inhale the scent of grilling meat wafting about and hunt for dropped tidbits. He saw kids playing soccer and wanted to nab their ball. And he was hell-bent on keeping his group – me, him and his Papa – together. Rounding us up is something my dear Kelpie mix has always done, and more intently in new environments. Continue Reading

Max, Lola, Roxie, Charlie, Pancake, Izzy, Suki! . . . When it comes to dogs, what’s in a name?

As it turns out, with the right training, quite a bit.

Your dog’s name can be a lot more than just the word you use to refer to him. With the right training, your dog’s name can serve as a cue to look at you. Getting dogs to pay attention to their humans around lots of distractions is one of the most common dog guardians’ challenges. Name training is the first step to teaching your dog to attend to and focus on you no matter where you are. Name training is also a terrific building block for teaching your dog to come to you when you call him. Continue Reading

In an old Destiny’s Child song a woman singer, suspicious that her boyfriend is cheating on her, asks him on the telephone to say her name. If he says it, it will mean one thing – no other woman’s with him to give him grief about talking to the singer/girlfriend. If he won’t say the singer’s name, it means something else. Without much thought we understand implicitly the context of the singer’s request and that the boyfriend’s utterance of her name (or not) is loaded with meaning. As members of a verbal species, such is the power of language among us.

All of this nuance, context and meaning is lost on dogs. Continue Reading