Cassidy
My parents dog Cassidy has chronic ear infections. She has had them for years. Every few months she follows the same cycle. She gets an infection, she gets medication, the infection goes away. And then the cycle repeats. Cassidy hates having medication put in her ears. So much so that she has become very wary of anyone touching her head. She doesn’t bite or become aggressive. She just pulls her head away and runs and hides if she sees you coming with a bottle of medication.
There was one point in time when Cassidy started biting. I reached down to pet her and she nipped at me. Was this some newly developed behavior problem. No. Cassidy had another ear infection and all the head shaking she had been doing had resulted in a painful hematoma on her ear.
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Cats have been a part of my life since I was 5 years old and a tiny black and white kitten took refuge from a storm underneath the freezer in our garage. Much to my fathers dismay (he’s a dog person), Midnight was soon out from under the freezer and a part of the family.
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Torchy sleeping in his crate
I am a huge advocate of crate training dogs. Crate training provides a dog with a safe environment to call his own. I have recently been perfecting the art of crate training. My fiance John and I have two dogs right now under a year of age. John has an extremely high energy Red Heeler puppy named Torchy and crate training has been essential to building a happy life together.
Because John lives in a condominium barking is something that we strive to keep at a minimum. At one point during his crate training Torchy would bark nonstop if he was crated and John was in the room. John is working on his PhD and would often have Torchy in his crate while he was studying and couldn’t keep an eye on him. The problem developed that Torchy would bark at John when he put him in his crate and stayed in the room to study.
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It never fails. Anytime someone asks me what I do and I tell them that I am an animal behaviorist I get the same response. “Really? I have this dog and he barks too much. Any suggestions?” The type of animal and the problem varies depending on who I am talking, but the essence is the same. It seems that just about everyone has a pet with some sort of problem that they would like to change in some way.
While I was in Iowa recently visiting family it turns out that two of my cousins are having problems with their pets. One has a biting kitten and the other has a dog that can be aggressive around children. Both are problems that require an animal behaviorist that specializes in problem behaviors. The great thing is that I can still help them even though we are on completely opposite sides of the country. Several scientific studies have found that remote sessions with an animal behaviorist (sessions provided over the telephone, fax, or email) are equally as effective as in person sessions in resolving behavior problems in pets.
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I was watching a rerun of Friends the other day and in this episode Rachel brings home a hairless cat. It turns out though that she paid something like $1000 for a cat that she can’t even touch. She ends up carrying it around with oven mitts on so that she can avoid being scratched.
The next day, I ended up working with a couple of cats that were complete opposites of each other. One, similar to Rachel’s cat on Friends, was untouchable, even by her owner. The other was sweet and cuddly even in an unfamiliar environment with new people.
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As I was wandering around the internet today, reading various animal related sites, I suddenly came to the realization that many people do not know what an animal behaviorist does, particularly an applied animal behaviorist such as myself. The general consensus seemed to be that I had a couch in my office where I had dogs and cats lie down and tell me about their problems – a doggie/kitty shrink so to speak.
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Rusty and his rawhide
Rusty is now 4 months old and teething. What this translates to for me is that he want to chew on everything he sees. It seems that anything with in reach ends up in his mouth. Including, a book of my parents while we were visiting – sorry mom. I even remember when I was in elementary school our puppy Nikki chewed through a vacuum cleaner cord. Yes it was plugged in and most fortunately there were no significant injuries – only singed whiskers. It could have been much worse.
Chewing is actually a very natural behavior for dogs. Most dogs will have a strong desire to chew up until 12-18 months of age. After that the occurrence of chewing behavior tends to decrease. What’s important is to channel this behavior to appropriate sources.
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Rusty
Rusty is my adorable 3.5 month old Australian Shepphard puppy. Now, when my fiance and I first started to look at getting another dog. There was one major downside to puppy owning that we were not looking forward too… potty training. With our Red Heeler puppy at 6 months old, the realities and stresses of potty training were very fresh in our minds.
Obviously we chose to adopt Rusty inspite of those demands and I’m happy to say potty training has gone relatively easily. There is one thing that I had to remind myself during those potty training days: Rusty doesn’t know he’s supposed to go potty outside.
If you think about it from the dog’s perspective it’s really quite simple: you feel the urge to go and you go. But in order for a dog to live in a human world, he’s got to learn our rules.
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My name is Stephanie Russell and I am the founder and owner of Fresh Start Pet Coaching. For those of you have been here before you may notice some changes to the site (I deleted everything and decided to start over). To the rest of you, welcome and I hope you enjoy reading what is to come.
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